Tribeca: “The Wolf, the Fox and the Leopard” is an Animalistic Epic
Is a sense of humanity instilled in all members of the human race? Or does it come from being born and raised in a civilized society? The Tribeca-premiering The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard begs this very question. Are humans inherently human? The film struggles to be contained to any one genre. It’s a multi-year odyssey unfolding in the shadow of a looming ecological crisis that doesn’t sound too far off from the one in real life that’s just around the corner. The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard reckons with humanity’s impact on the world around them and asks if one girl can be the answer to the wreckage we have wrought.
The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard begins not that far away from where it ends, but the route it takes is fairly impossible to guess. Without delving deeply into the various paths the film finds its way down, The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard centers on a feral girl (Jessica Reynolds) who was raised by wolves into her teenage years. She has no understanding of human language or cultural and societal expectations. She’s nameless and unburdened by the fears of climate change. She lives freely in the woods until she is one day found and taken to a lab for study. Her time there isn’t long, as word of her existence spreads rapidly and inspires a husband/wife duo (Nicholas Pinnock & Marie Jung) to kidnap her. They’ve built a life for themselves on an abandoned offshore oil rig to live out the end of days and believe this girl, who they name One, is the key to humanity’s survival.
courtesy of Tribeca
While that brief synopsis may seem as though too many plot points have been given away, it’s merely scratching the surface of The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard. The film is an art house odyssey, the likes of which we don’t really get to see. It takes the big ideas of humanity, climate change, and the looming loss of our natural connection and presents them in a slow-moving character drama. For much of the film, it’s One and the parents who forcibly adopted her, a microcosm of a society wholly at odds with the reality One had known all of her life. The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard reflects on language and our ability to communicate with those who don’t understand us. It also looks at language as a means of power. What we teach, what we don’t, and how that affects a person’s ability to comprehend the society they’ve been forced to live in.
The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard is a deeply grimy, visceral movie. Reynolds’ performance as One is physical in a way that is simply jaw-dropping. She gallops on her arms and legs as though she’s been doing it her entire life, arching her back as he releases a guttural growl to protect her pack. When the couple works to indoctrinate her into the world of humanity, Reynolds still lets pieces of that animalistic nature find their way to the surface. As the film progresses and the time she’s spent in the human world eclipses her time as a wolf, her old mannerisms are mostly gone. The viewer can tell she’s playing a part, adapting to the habitat she’s been forced into, but when she’s pushed and her true wolf-like self returns, Reynolds once again throws her entire body into the transformation.
There’s much to unpack within The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard. From its stunning nature cinematography to the concept of a person unwittingly becoming a symbol, to the idea that all Homo sapiens are born with an inherent set of characteristics, The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard is no easily digestible, ecologically-inspired epic. That being said, the film speaks to our current state of affairs extraordinarily well, giving voice to the fear that humanity’s impact on nature might not be reversible.
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