Who knew that a crotchety, hump-backed, mangy, spitting creature could melt your heart like a trembling beau? Honestly, the baby camel in this Mongolian odyssey makes Bambi look like an unprepossessing, rampaging Ingerlander down the Algarve. But this adorable fluff-ball (the camel, not the hooligan) is far from the sole attraction in this charming ethnography.
Though officially this gorgeous little film is a documentary (and indeed, it’s an undeniably fascinating depiction of nomadic life in the Gobi Desert), the enterprising German (student) filmmakers have created a seamless, narrative-driven gem with whale-song echoes of last summer’s Maori hit Whale Rider – a sort of ‘Nanook of the Sands’. Following an excruciating two-day labour, a camel gives birth to our Disney-worthy white colt, but she rejects her offspring with several swift, embittered kicks. Without mother’s milk, the newborn’s prospects are rather grim, so two child shepherds take off to find a violinist, believing that a music ritual will reconcile the dysfunctional animals. Crossing the Gobi Desert, they encounter evidence of globalistion in the form of television and ice-cream, but they do finally engage a music professor whose strange, yet soothing melody prompts mummy camel to burst into tears.
The bizarre sight of a sobbing camel with a violin tied to its hump looks like something devised by Fellini in one of more surrealist outbursts, and you actually have to see it to believe it. But will it be enough to inspire a mother and child reunion? Let’s just say the seriously aww-provoking finale will have you blubbing like a - well, like a mummy camel. Enchanting and riveting stuff, but now you’ll really have to excuse me – I think I have something in my eye...