EO |
❊ ❊ ❊ 1/2 - Rating - 2022 - Drama - 1h 28m
EO is a 2022 drama road movie directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. Inspired by Robert Bresson's 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar it follows the life of a donkey introduced to us while featured in a Polish circus.
Follows a donkey who encounters on his journeys good and bad people experiences joy and pain exploring a vision of modern Europe through his eyes.
The film premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2022 where it won the Jury Prize tying with The Eight Mountains. Submitted by Poland EO was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards
Cast: Hola Tako Marietta
Release date: 6 April 2023
Official Trailer
Review
97% TOMATOMETER
67% AUDIENCE SCORE
If you watched The Banshees of Inisherin and like most of the world fell in love with Jenny the donkey and went on an emotional journey with her well this is your next fix of beautiful trauma.
Reviewed by PAUL BYRNES
Eo is a little grey donkey. We follow his adventures as he wanders through modern Europe getting into scrapes he does not understand and learning the hard way that you cannot trust humans.
The film by Polish master Jerzy Skolimowski is both moving and puzzling a story about an innocent done in a style that doesn't always have the same innocence.
As a pairing of sound and image it is often beautiful even stunning. Skolimowski 84 collaborated with Polish composer Pawel Mykietyn whose brooding score gives the film depth.
It moves the images towards the abstract which Skolimowski embraces by flooding the screen with effects like a red wash or a blurred version of what the donkey might be seeing. The experimentation is sometimes intriguing just as often it is jarring.
Skolimowski is one of the leaders of the great generation of post-war Polish directors alongside Andrzej Wajda Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Zanussi who emerged in the 1960s.
He hasn't made a film for seven years so he has a lot on his mind. Eo is both an ecological fable of antimeat and anti-industrial vandalism and a commentary on modern Europe from skinheads and football violence to inequality and poverty. It is perhaps more successful as fable unless you enjoy a didactic approach.
The film is inspired by another donkey movie. In 1966 the great French director Robert Bresson made a film about the trials and tribulations of a small ass in the Pyrenees.
Skolimowski has said that Au Hasard Balthazar is the only film that has made him cry. Eo follows a similar trajectory. It begins in a circus where Eo's young trainer (Sandra Drzymalska) lavishes him with affection.
When the circus goes bankrupt Eo is sold to a horse stud then a farm from which he runs away. He keeps going as he doesn't know what else to do. Later Isabelle Huppert makes a short appearance as a countess whose gambling stepson - a priest
- saves Eo from the salami factory.
There is a short psychodrama between the two humans and then Eo takes off. Neither Eo nor I could understand what that was all about.
There is a beauty in observing what life might be like for an animal. It makes us pause and think about the cruelties we allow in the name of food - not just meat but all the processes in which animals are beasts of burden.
Festival audiences in Europe and North America have responded with great affection to this film .
Some critics have lavished it with extravagant praise. I would have liked it more if Skolimowski had offered less of his editorial comment but that's not his style.
It is hard not to be moved by this gallant little donkey despite all the directorial flourishes .
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