Dad, lad and geese bond and try to soar
Spread Your Wings (PG, 113mins) Directed by Nicolas Vanier Reviewed by James Croot ★★★
Three weeks of sun, sea – and mosquitoes. Thomas (Louis Vazquez) can’t think of anything worse. The French 14-year-old would much rather be home alone playing video games than trapped in the middle of the St Roman marshes. But his mother hasn’t given him any choice, he needs to spend some time with his ornithologist father.
But dad Christian (Jean-Paul Rouve) has more pressing concerns on his mind than his son’s boredom. Numbers of the lesser white-fronted geese are rapidly dwindling, their annual migration’s flightpath blighted by airports, powerlines, hunters, and light pollution. With developers also planning to drain their winter wetland home for an industrial park, the species is increasingly endangered.
Christian has a radical solution, but government cuts mean he’ll have to do it without funding. It involves imprinting on the latest generation, driving them all in a van to Lapland, and then persuading them to follow his ultralight aircraft back home via a less dangerous path.
However, having already forged his department’s authority, Christian and the surprisingly enthused Thomas now find themselves at the mercy of Norwegian authorities who aren’t keen on having the gaggle running wild on their soil without absolute guarantees they’re not bird flu free. So when, after 10 days of cooling their heels, frustration finally gets the better of Christian, Thomas is forced to take drastic action to prevent their brood being impounded.
If this central conceit sounds familiar, that’s because it is remarkably similar to 1996 Anna Paquin-starrer Fly Away Home. Like that charming Canadian flick, this is inspired by real life, in this case French ornithologist Christian Moullec, one of the screenplay’s four writers. In 1995, he successfully led a group of geese a somewhat shorter distance than that depicted in Spread Your Wings – from northern Sweden to southern Germany.
That’s just one of a number of artistic liberties taken by the film-makers.
Director Nicolas Vanier (best known for World War II doggy derring-do drama Belle and Sebastian) turns the second half of this tale into a boys’ own adventure involving big cats, inclement weather and kind strangers.
While that also allows the opportunity to showcase impressive vistas and aerial photography, it can’t lift the air of slightly plodding predictability, something not helped by sketchily written support characters.
In English and French and Norwegian with English subtitles.