No, not the weirdest love story that ever was, but a touching live action portrayal of the friendship that grows between a young girl and a majestic renard when she stumbles across him in rural France.

Yes, it’s French. Obviously, it’s French. If it was British, the fox would have a cockney accent and a smack problem, and get arrested halfway through the film for beating up his wife. But being French, this is a charming and aesthetically lovely film in which nothing much happens but there are an awful lot of pretty pictures to compensate.

It tells the twin stories of a young girl (Bertille Noel-Bruneau) and a wild fox, as their lives drift apart and converge against the backdrop of the changing seasons: the girl falls asleep one night in the forest and wakes up to find the fox nestling beside her. They form a friendship that falls apart when she tries to domesticate the creature.

A sparse narration courtesy of Kate Winslet makes this an appealing family film of the calibre you’d expect from Luc Jacquet, director of March of the Penguins. It’s out in cinemas across the country this week.