Sunny et l’éléphant (2008) - film review

Sunny, a teenage orphan, lives and works with elephants in the forests of Thailand.  His dream is to become a cornac, an elephant driver, but this is unlikely to become reality as he belongs to the wrong tribe.  With the forestry industry becoming increasingly mechanised, Sunny and his cornac friends are driven to Bangkok, where their elephants are exploited by unscrupulous businessmen as a tourist attraction.  A European veterinary offers to help the cornacs to return to their homeland, so they can watch over their forests and protect the native elephants...

Acclaimed writer, journalist and television producer Frédéric Lepage makes his directing debut with this personal reflection on man’s relationship with the natural world, although it is hard to know just what audience he is aiming it at.   Sunny et l’éléphant is far from being a masterpiece - its tendency for gratuitous sentiment milking and superficial characterisation render it suitable only for a child audience - but it has an innocence and charm that make it a welcome alternative to comparable soulless animal-themed adventure films from Hollywood and Disney. 

With its pantomime villains and painfully trite plot involving animal exploitation, the film manages to be even less sophisticated than the exploits of a certain bush kangaroo of the 1960s, but the stunning location photography and striking images of elephants in their natural habitat just about makes up for this.   If Lepage was intending to win an audience over to his conservationist cause, he has certainly failed.  If, on the other hand, his aim was only to make a pretty film for very young children, he hasn’t fared too badly.   Sunny et l’éléphant will delight many a five-year-old, although it will probably drive most adult viewers out of the house.  In any event, Lepage has botched a golden opportunity to make us aware of our responsibilities to our world and the magnificent creatures we share it with.

© filmsdefrance.com 2011

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