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Join Telegram ChannelGilles de Maistre films a new wild animal in a family and ecological fiction.
Updated August 23, 2024: After its success at the cinema (almost a million admissions in France), The Last Jaguar arrives on Canal Plus this Friday at 9 p.m. (as well as on MyCanal). Gilles de Maistre, the director of Mia and the White Lionthis time takes us to the Amazon to tell us a new story between a young girl and a feline.
Article from February 9, 2024: At the end of 2018, Gilles de Maistre had wowed the young audience thanks to Mia and the White Lion. Filmed with the help of zoologist Kevin Richardson, aka “the man who whispered in the lions' ears”this tale of friendship between a little girl and a lion cub growing up alongside her before being threatened by poachers, was convincing, especially thanks to its incredible scenes where the heroine rubbed shoulders with the animal, walking alongside it or even cuddling it, even when it had reached its adult size.
“The predictability of the plot and the small approximations of the interpretation are quickly forgiven as the scenes where Mia as a teenager plays with the adult feline are breathtaking”we wrote in our newspaper when it was released critical.
Gilles de Maistre: “Mia and the White Lion has been bought all over the world… except in South Africa”
The project of a sequel had quickly been mentioned, but it was impossible to find the same actress and the same feline after the end of the exceptional filming of this film, spread over several years for “tame” the feline. Once the bond between the young teenager and the animal was broken, the team could no longer recreate it.
After two other projects, the documentary Tomorrow is ours (2019), following children who want to change the world, and animal fiction The Wolf and the Lion (2021), the director and his co-writer Prune de Maistre therefore had the idea of a story very close to that of Mia, but with a jaguar, this time. A creature just as wild… and victim of bloody trafficking.
The Last Jaguar takes us to the heart of the Amazon, on the trail of Hope, the last animal of its species to survive in the wild. Young Autumn (played by Airam Camacho, then by Lumi Pollack) was close to it in her childhood within a local tribe, before a tragedy that pushed her father to take her to live in New York. When she learns that the beast is in danger, she takes the first plane to try to save it, in secret. She reluctantly drags along her SVT teacher (Emily Bett Rickards from Arrow), an agoraphobic woman who can do nothing without the help of her little hedgehog.
If we obviously think of The Emerald Forestby John Boorman, or in the cinema of Jean-Jacques Annaud (Two brothers in the lead), The Last Jaguar is unfortunately not as striking as its models. Nor that Mia and the White Lion. We find its qualities there, namely spectacular scenes between the young actress and the immense jaguar.
This one was raised alongside her for several months, allowing to create this proximity that is literally filmed from all angles. Among all the actresses approached for this project, Lumi was chosen because she was the most comfortable with the jaguar, the most curious, attentive to animals, and this is felt on screen. She almost didn't make the film, SAG-AFTRA (the American actors' union, to which she had been attached since her participation in The Falloutin 2021) finding the concept of having a 13-year-old girl rotate with a real wild animal too dangerous.
The film is truly built around this relationship, with the reunion between Autumn and Hope being conceived as the climax of the Last Jaguar. Unfortunately, beyond these key scenes, the plot gets bogged down in unbelievable situations, especially because of the comic supporting role who multiplies the grotesque gags. The film alternates between naivety and jokes, and repeatedly emphasizes its messages, certainly important, of the preservation of wildlife and the will to follow one's ideals to the end. But by dint of overdoing it, it is ultimately less moving than Mia. Probably also because it was not entirely filmed in natural settings? The atmosphere is too artificial to make us travel as much as we would have liked with Autumn and Hope…