Two quiet and life-changing weeks with a penguin

MPAA Rating: PG
USCCB Rating: Not rated at the time of this review
Reel Rating: 4 out of 5 reels

It’s fair to say that penguins are overrepresented in the cinematic animal universe. In 2005, March of the Penguins won the Oscar for Best Documentary, and Happy Feet won Best Animated Film the next year

Since then, penguins have continued to be popular, especially in children’s media. Now comes My Penguin Friend, which will still entertain kiddos with an adorable flightless bird but also gets adults thinking about why we humans feel the impulse to connect with these clumsy critters.

Joao (Jean Reno) lives a quiet, unassuming life with his wife Maria (Adrianna Barraza) as a poor fisherman off the coast of Brazil. Several decades ago, his only son tragically drowned during a storm, effectively freezing his life in time. He gets up every morning and reads the paper while his wife makes breakfast and coffee. He fishes, takes the catch to market, then returns home for dinner and bed. They have no hobbies and rarely even speak to one another. Without a sound, their pain screams volumes.

One day, he finds an injured penguin washed up on the beach. He cleans it, binds its wounds, and keeps him warm, despite his wife’s rolling eyes. “It’s only until he gets better,” he tells her. Gradually, the penguin–now named Din Din–improves and becomes more curious. He acts like a cat, waddling around, investigating small spaces, sleeping on Joao’s lap, and even making purring noises when pet. Soon, however, he recovers and leaves for the ocean. Unexpectedly, he returns a few months later.

Over the course of the next few years, Din Din shows up randomly and stays for a few days. He becomes a local celebrity as he nonchalantly wanders through town, accepting fish from friendly folk. A group of scientists notice one of their tags when Din Din is featured in a news story. Somehow, he manages to find that exact beach year after year despite his nesting grounds with the other penguins are thousands of miles away. Unfortunately, their interest–and that of the wider world—may bring trouble.

The one thing this movie had to get absolutely right is the star animal actor. In this sense, the film is a home run. Din Din is cute, funny, playful, mischievous, and heartwarming. One moment he’s stealing food from an unsuspecting tourist and another he gently taking a turn sitting on his wife’s eggs.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Johnathon Kim, one of film’s producers, who went into detail about the intricacies of penguin wrangling. There were ten trained penguins used for Din Din, and over 80% of shots with him were real. The only time CGI was used was in wide shots, when a group of penguins had to perform a specific movement or there was an element of danger (a scene where Din Din falls off a cliff).

The rapport with Reno was also genuine. At his insistence, all ten penguins lived, ate, and slept with this international superstar in a small beach house for two weeks prior to filming. That’s a movie just in itself.

The most striking aspect of My Penguin Friend is its silence. Drawing from other French films like The Bear and The Red Balloon, the scenes between Joao and Din Din are mostly free of dialogue. Their story is told through movement, expression, and subtle actions. There is also a heavy use of Din Din’s perspective, in which the audience sees his adventures through the sea, trying to build a nest, finding a mate, and dealing with all sorts of things known only to God.

There are also long stretches where Joao just looks at the sunset or Din Din quietly walks along the beach. So much of God’s creation is unobserved by human eyes, but He knows and loves everything He has made. It is good, beautiful, and man is privileged to have this unique role as stewards of God’s world.

The film may have reached five-reel status, but—of course–the studios need a traditional plot narrative to appeal to the masses. Din Din’s amazing ability to find his way back through stormy seas leads some evil bureaucrats wanting to capture and study the creature, but these young 20-something science geeks will have none of it. “He comes, and he goes, as he pleases,” insists Joao.

It’s a little silly, but nonetheless a reminder that not everything needs an explanation and some wonders are best left private.

In the last moments, Din Din finds a lost relic of Joao’s son that he believed lost. He and Maria–without the penguin–share a quiet, cathartic moment in which they admit their loss and receive peace. Through this experience, God has brought them solace.

This is why man seeks the stillness of the natural world. It is here, away from the noise of human busyness and fallacy, we can experience a taste of the original Garden and the hope that some day it will always be like this.