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(SXSW) Olivia Colman Voices a Talking Fox in the Folklore Comedy THE FOX

By. Professor Horror

 

Every creature on the planet has its own particular brand of behavior. Cats are jerks. Frogs are sex pests. Dogs are cheerful degenerates who would sell their souls (and yours) for a sandwich. Humans, however, may be the strangest animals of all. Unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, humans possess the unique ability to make themselves miserable and then stubbornly refuse to believe there is anything they can do about it. Making its international premiere at SXSW, THE FOX finds director Dario Russo turning that particular human flaw into the engine of a delightfully strange magical realism comedy. Drawing inspiration from folklore traditions around the world, Russo imagines a modern Australia where talking animals occasionally wander into human lives, offer questionable advice, and watch with mild amusement as people sabotage themselves in the name of love.

Set in Australia, the film follows Nick (Jai Courtney), a man whose idea of a fulfilling life involves little more than regular trips to the pub and the comforting routine of everyday mediocrity. Nick wants to marry his girlfriend Cory (Emily Browning), and while she technically agrees to the proposal, it quickly becomes clear she is far less enthusiastic about their future together. Cory finds Nick’s comfortable but uninspiring lifestyle suffocating, and she has been having an affair behind his back with her boss Derek (Damon Herriman). To make matters even messier, Derek happens to be married to Cory’s best friend Diana (Claudia Doumit), who discovers the betrayal in the most disgusting way possible. Nearly everyone around them seems to recognize that the relationship is doomed. Friends question it. Family members question it. Even Cory herself seems unsure why she is still there. The only person who appears completely devoted to the relationship is Nick, who is convinced that if he can just make things go back to normal, everything will work out fine.

His unlikely guide arrives in the form of a talking Fox voiced by Olivia Colman. Nick first encounters the creature while attempting to shoot it for killing his chickens. Like many trickster figures in folklore, the Fox talks her way out of immediate death by offering Nick a deal. Spare her life, and she will help him figure out what to do about Cory and Derek. The Fox puppet itself strikes a charming balance between realism and storybook whimsy, looking somewhere between an actual fox and something that wandered out of Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas. The slightly handmade aesthetic reinforces the film’s folkloric roots while also adding to its comedic charm. Russo has said that while researching folklore, he was fascinated by how frequently animals appear as advisors, tricksters, or moral instructors in traditional stories. Yet most of those stories are set in distant or mythical pasts. With THE FOX, Russo imagines what would happen if those same creatures appeared in the modern world and encountered humans whose problems are less about dragons and curses and more about infidelity, boredom, and emotional incompetence.

The film operates within a loose form of magical realism where the extraordinary slips casually into everyday life. Talking animals wander into scenes with little fanfare, and most people react with surprising indifference. The Fox offers relationship advice with the confidence of someone who has watched humans make terrible decisions for centuries, while a meddlesome Magpie (voiced by Sam Neill) tries repeatedly to derail the Fox’s plans. The Magpie functions as the Fox's natural antagonist (and in folkloric terms) a fitting one. Where the Fox is a trickster who at least has a plan, the Magpie is chaos with feathers, a creature whose interference feels less like malice and more like an inability to resist being involved. Folklore traditions are full of birds as omens and messengers, but the Magpie here is something older and more annoying: the kind of figure who shows up in myths to complicate the hero's journey simply because that is what Magpies do. Neill voices him with the petty relish of a born snitch. That the Fox finds him insufferable while still being unable to shake him gives their dynamic the texture of a very old argument.

The Fox eventually proposes a solution to Nick’s problem that sounds suspiciously like something out of a changeling myth. She promises to make Cory “perfect” and end her cheating ways forever. Nick, understandably upset about the affair but not particularly interested in examining the deeper problems in his relationship, eagerly agrees. If the extra-marital sex disappears, surely everything else will fall into place. What Nick receives instead is something far stranger. After following the Fox’s instructions, Cory disappears into the forest and later returns home…different. She is no longer quite herself because she is not herself at all. The Fox has taken her place. The resulting dynamic is both funny and fairly uncomfortable. The new Cory is loyal, attentive, and completely devoted to Nick, but she also behaves like a creature that has only recently learned how humans function. Everyday actions require careful imitation, and the Fox frequently slips into odd behaviors that reveal her true nature beneath the borrowed human body. The situation carries echoes of The Stepford Wives, though Russo complicates the familiar trope. Instead of presenting a passive robotic spouse, the Fox-Cory retains a strange kind of agency. She may be performing the role of the perfect partner, but she also defiantly establishes how she defines herself as a human. In fact, much of the film’s comedic energy comes from Browning’s performance once the Fox takes over Cory’s body. Browning steals scene after scene through both sharp comedic timing and wonderfully awkward physical comedy.

What makes THE FOX particularly entertaining is the way it treats its absurd premise with complete sincerity. The animals behave exactly as animals should: curious, opportunistic, occasionally manipulative, but fundamentally honest about their nature. Humans, on the other hand, remain baffling creatures who insist on clinging to dysfunctional relationships and bad decisions simply because they want things to stay the way they are. The Fox cannot understand why Nick refuses to confront the obvious truth about his relationship. Instead of facing reality, he chooses the folkloric shortcut. Running quietly beneath the film’s comedy is a simple phrase repeated throughout the story: “It is what it is.” Characters say it with resignation, frustration, and sometimes relief. The Fox seems to understand the phrase better than any of the humans. Animals accept the world as it exists. Humans constantly try to reshape reality to match their expectations, even when those expectations are clearly unrealistic.

THE FOX is, at its core, a film about the gap between what people want and what they are willing to admit they want and it turns out that gap is enormous, embarrassing, and frequently hilarious. Russo fills it with talking animals and one man's spectacularly misguided attempt to fix his relationship by essentially outsourcing his girlfriend. The Fox watches all of this with the patient exasperation of a creature who has seen humans make the same mistakes for centuries and has long since stopped being surprised. She offers advice. She offers shortcuts. She even offers to become the perfect partner. None of it quite works, because the problem was never Cory. It was Nick. The animals of this film understand that instinctively. The humans, as usual, are the last to know.Top of Form

 

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