26/02/2024 - BERLINALE 2024: Mascha Halberstad’s animated characters really do need to save the forest – but before that, they have to deal with massive egos and tiny underwear

There was an old show once, telling everyone to just Leave It to Beaver. It’s crap advice, clearly, as nothing good can ever come of it. At least not in the entertaining, if slightly mad, Berlinale Generation Kplus animation Fox and Hare Save the Forest [+see also:
interview: Mascha Halberstad
film profile] by Mascha Halberstad.

Here, Beaver is choking on his own ambition. He wants to build a giant dam, mostly because he can, and effectively blocks the flow of the river with his two mumbling Rat henchmen. Mayhem ensues, and houses are flooded. “This is what happens when you mess with the Beaver,” he yells at one point, celebrating years of Bond-villain legacy. Literally – megalomaniac Karl Stromberg (played by Curd Jürgens in The Spy Who Loved Me) was already planning to destroy the world and create a new civilisation under the sea. These two should have a chat.

While the story is thin and the 3D animation not as charming, or as quirky, as Halberstad’s stop-motion delight Oink [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mascha Halberstad
film profile], there is still plenty of weirdness to go around, starting with the fact that a film for five-year-olds (and up) now has a character walking around in the kind of skimpy undies you would normally see in really underlit bars – there is the ghost of Ray Winstone and his Sexy Beast swimming trunks floating around here somewhere – but that’s the whole point. These characters are very different, and they are allowed to be different. Their forest might be odd, but it’s very inclusive. And there are some pretty legit parties, too.

Still, as the woods face pointless destruction, the whole film turns into a commentary on today’s world – one that features an Owl obsessed with her favourite doll, granted. There is a rich rodent with a “vision” who doesn’t care one bit about the nightmare that follows. There are those who try to stop him, but they have no real means to do so – Tusk, now wearing more clothes and desperately digging a hole only to see it inundated with water again, is not unlike all those activists whose voices are drowned out by construction machinery. At the same time, Fox can’t help but be a little intrigued by the egomaniacal maniac, by his confidence and his power. It’s a light story, and there is even a song or two, but there are times when it feels dark, somehow, at least to parents – chances are, the kids will just focus on the blonde Mermaid instead, rolling around in a bathtub.

Halberstad is an interesting filmmaker with a wicked sense of humour, a love for grown-up references and huge respect for her audience, big or small. She is not afraid of showing a creature that has lost it, with a massive ice sculpture of himself taking up most of his home and delusions of grandeur mirroring those of many politicians. “Today, I will show the world how great I am,” he says. But she also seems to believe that people – and forest animals – are capable of change. It’s an important message, but one that’s delivered discreetly, alongside calls for environmental sustainability and nonsensical murmurs of Rats doing their best Tommy Shelby impressions. While her personal projects, like Oink, are arguably more touching, that’ll do, pig. That’ll do.

Fox and Hare Save the Forest was produced by Submarine (Netherlands), Walking the Dog (Belgium) and Doghouse (Luxembourg). It is sold internationally by Urban Sales.