Movie Thoughts: Misa Mi (2003)

• Released: 13 December 2003
• Directed by: Linus Torell
• Running time: 1 h 20 min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

After the death of her mother, a girl named Misha goes to live with her grandma in the Swedish wilderness, where she happens to befriend a lone she-wolf and her pups.

My Thoughts

A pretty standard "child meets feral animal friend" movie, but with some twists thrown in. I did like how blunt they were at first about her mother being gone. At first they dance around the subject, but then she just flat out narrates that her problem is that her mother died and her father has a new love interest she doesn't like.

The characters are very one note. Misa is just your depressed girl who wants to protect her wolves, and I honestly don't remember any of the other characters' names because they were so generic. Grandma is just grandma, her friend is just her generic friend, etc. 

The acting was decent but not too great, either. It does help that it's in a language I'm unfamiliar with, so it doesn't stand out ot me as much.

For the adult wolves, they got actual wolves to play them, and I liked how, for the child actors' safety, they kept the interactions between wolf and girl to a minimum. They sometimes appear on-screen at the same time, but usually it's just a shot of the wolf staring into the camera after which it cuts to Misa staring into the camera, creating the illusion that they are together. It may be a bit distracting, but I honestly liked how "her" she-wolf didn't end up becoming some pet to her. She never pets the wolf or treats it as such, she keeps a respectful distance and talks to it but never seeks to outright pet her. Well, not until the she-wolf is shot, which is a sad moment because you feel that Misa has been projecting her feelings of the loss of her mother onto this maternal wolf.

The puppies are unfortunately just played by two huskies, and it's very obvious. They don't even remotely look like wolves, one of them even has a floppy ear which wolf puppies wouldn't have around that age, and they have white tail tips, uniform colors and the husky "goggle" markings and all. I get that this is probably for the better to not have her interact with real wolf pups, but they could've gotten dog puppies that resembled wolves more. Maybe agouti huskies or Tamaskans or something. This just didn't really work.

This wasn't a great movie, but if you just want your basic "girl befriends wild animal" movie, it's definitely serviceable. Just don't get too attached to Mama Wolf because she bites the dust pretty soon.