Parky At the Pictures (1/5/2026)

(Reviews of Wild Foxes; and Power to the People: John & Yoko in NYC)

WILD FOXES.

As a recent BFI Southbank season demonstrated, film-makers have found boxing an irresistible subject. Indeed, cinema owes the sport a good deal, as the Latham brothers invented a loop that prevented celluloid strips from tearing in the camera/projector (and, thus, enabled longer films), in order to shoot The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897). Although Jean-Pierre Coopman fought Muhammad Ali in Puerto Rico in 1976, Belgium can't lay claim to many famous pugilists. But it now has a boxing film to shout about in the form of

Valéry Carnoy's debut feature, Wild Foxes, even though the setting is France and we should be referencing the likes of Georges Carpentier and Marcel Cerdan.

Already representing France, teenage boxer Camille (Samuel Kircher) attends an elite sports-études boarding school. Coached by Bogdan (Jean-Baptiste Durand), he is keen to stay put, despite offers to go to places with better facilities. However, best friend Matteo (Fayçal Anaflous) is on a final warning for disciplinary issues and pals LPF (Jef Jacobs), Nasserdine (Hassan Alili), and

Coreb (Salahdine El Garchi) try to keep him on the straight and narrow.

They know nothing, though, about Camille and Matteo's habit of stealing meat from the kitchen and feeding the wild foxes in the forest that abuts the school. Camille is so thrilled by witnessing a young fox jumping up to snatch the cuts dangling by strings from a branch that he insists on following it into the woods. He finds himself on a rock ledge and slips after spotting the fox in the undergrowth. Unable to hold on, he falls several feet and Matteo has to carry him to the nearest hospital, where he requires emergency surgery on a deep gash on his forearm.

Lucky to have survived with such minor injuries, Camille rushes back to training at the school. But he feels pain in the arm while sparring with Caleb during a trial for an inter-schools tournament and he's not selected. Matteo asks if he's okay, as he seemed spooked in the ring. But he insists he's fine, even though he has a nocturnal panic attack and calls Boulers the caretaker (Raphaël Thiéry) because he's scared. Refusing to take time off, he's back in the gym the next day, but has an argument with Matteo when he quits a bench pressing session and he has to reassure Bogdan that he's still got his head in the game.

Having noticed taekwondo student Yas (Anne Heckel) in the canteen, Camille follows her when he sees her sloping off into the woods. He discovers she plays the trumpet in secret and she lets him listen in return for seeing his scar. She shows him one on her calf and he admits the one on his knee was caused by his abusive father. They agree to meet up again, but Camille doesn't tell Matteo, when he accompanies him for a doctor's check-up. As there is no physical reason for the continued pain, the medic suggests an appointment with a psychologist and Matteo warns Camille that Nasser and LPF reckon he's lost his edge since the accident and is using the injury as an excuse.

Having forged a note saying he has tendonitis, Camille asks Yas if she's ever had pain without an injury while showing her how he feeds the foxes, but she doesn't get his meaning and asks if he's talking about feeling sad. During a track session, he gets lapped by the others and tells Bogdan he feels sick. However, he has to rush off to stop a brawl among the others and he feels embarrassed that Matteo had been forced to defend him against LPF's taunts. They sit together in Matteo's room that night and listen to a sentimental song that his father had liked. But, when he wins his bout in the schools competition, Matteo is too caught up with celebrating with the others to bump hands with Camille at ringside.

When he's coaxed into a locker room ritual to smash a stone into his forehead, Camille draws blood when the others mock him for fearing injury. As he staggers out, he sees a fox rootling through the bins and empathises with it for being an outsider forced to survive as best it can. He's upset when it's found dead on the playground the next morning because someone living near the school had killed it and Dr Blanchard (Yoann Blanc) announces that there will be a hunt in the coming days, during which students will be confined to their rooms.

Angry with Camille for deleting the phone footage of his fight, Matteo tells Bogdan that he faked his doctor's note and he is forced to do extra training to prove he still merits a place at the school. Resentful at being ostracised from the group's table in the dining hall, Camille waits until Matteo has finished boasting in the showers about his sexual conquests to reveal that he was a virgin before his uncle paid for him to visit a prostitute. Seeing Camille with Yas, Matteo and LPF follow them along a corridor and she head-butts the latter when he teases her for wearing eye make-up. She gets slapped back and has a cut lip when Camille videos her playing through pain and tears on the school roof.

Camille had been feeling bad about taking Matteo's spot in the inter-schools tournament. But he has to prove to Bogdan he's ready for the upcoming European championships and he's winning before he allows himself to be unsettled by his opponent getting a nosebleed. Quitting at the start of the next round, Camille is bawled at by LPF for throwing the fight and he goes into the woods that night and scuffs his knuckles punching a tree. Returning to find the others have trashed his room and urinated on his bed, he asks Yas if he can sleep in her room. She reassures him that he's the best boxer in the group and could go far if he put his mind to it. But she backs away when he tries to kiss her, although she pulls his arm over her when they squeeze into her single bed.

On the day of the hunt, LPF and the others grab Camille and drag him into a sideroom. They order Matteo to shatter his arm with a baseball bat, but he can't bring himself to do it. Turning the tables, Camille lashes out at them and Matteo and LPF chase him into the woods. They're caught by one of the huntsmen and Matteo is expelled and LPF suspended, while Bogdan pleads for Camille to stay. Distressed by online footage of Matteo getting drunk with friends, he knuckles down to prepare for the Euros.

At the championsips. Camille is losing on points when he hears Matteo urging him on from the crowed. Having won by a knockout, he dodges the medal ceremony and has Matteo drive him to the train station in his cousin's Mercedes. Waving in relief that their friendship has survived, he thinks back to an interview he recently did, in which he reveals that he had started boxing at eight to defend himself against his father and had met Matteo at his first lesson. Recognising that boxing could still be his future, Camille feels more positive about life.

Following the shorts, Ma planète (2018) and Titan (2021), and having won two prizes at Cannes, the 39 year-old Carnoy can take his place alongside other compatriots who have recently considered the unique difficulties of growing up in the post-millennial world, including Lukas Dhont (Close, 2022), Anthony Schatteman (Young Hearts), Leonardo Van Dijl (Julie Keeps Quiet, both 2024), Cecilia Verheyden (Skiff), and those old masters, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne –(Young Mothers, both 2025). Drawing on his own experience of a juvenile injury and a punishing period at a sports training camp, Carnoy took advice from his young actors to ensure that their dialogue and costumes were as authentic as possible.

Played with conviction and sensitivity by Samuel Kircher (the 21 year-old son of Irène Jacob and Jérôme Kircher), this is more a rite-of-teenage-passage than a boxing saga, with its focus on such themes as insecurity, self-realisation, and acceptance. But the notion that sport offers an escape route for many with limited life options is key to the motivation of Camille and his classmates. Carnoy also examines Gen Z attitudes towards masculinity, competitiveness, and violence, while also using the group's exchanges with Yas to expose the effect that the manosphere is having in a world in which many youths are left to fend for themselves after having been raised by an abusive or absentee father.

The adults here are rather stereotypical, while Yas (the assured Anne Heckel) is eased out of the scenario too early. The hunting sequence is also clumsily crammed in to reinforce the vulpine symbolism and show how society deals with those who don't easily fit in. But Kircher and Fayçal Anaflous feel like old friends striving to retain their bond in the face of peer pressure and their individual ambitions. Carnoy keeps Arnaud Guez's camera close to them to suggest the intensity of the scrutiny they're under at the school and the struggles that they have to retain their identity in a place where discipline and dedication enforce conformity. It would be nice to know how Camille and Matteo fare in the future. But the best stories always leaves you wanting more.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE: JOHN & YOKO IN NYC.

Linked to Ron Chapman's Revival69, The Concert That Rocked the World via Kevin Macdonald's One to One: John and Yoko, Simon Hilton's Power to the People: John & Yoko in NYC completes the cinematic record of John Lennon's post-Beatles gigging career. There's still a guest appearance with Elton John at Madison Square Garden waiting in the wings, but no one seems to have filmed that. Making adroit and often split-screened use of footage filmed by Steve Gebhardt in 1972, this compelling concert film has been produced by Peter Worsley and Sean Ono Lennon and hits theatres for two days on the back of Sean releasing the three-disc Love (Meditation Mixes) on Record Store Day. For Fabs completists, it's a must. But even those who have become inured to the legend of St John the Imaginist will be taken by the insouciant charisma and effortless musicianship, as well as his besotted devotion to Yoko Ono and her distinctively avant-garde take on pop music.

The reasons for the two benefit shows for Willowbrook State School at Madison Square Garden on 30 August 1972 were outlined in One to One. So, we shall plough straight into the opening number, `New York City', which was easily the best track on the double Some Time in New York City album that John Lennon and Yoko Ono had released on 12 June. As Elephant's Memory had played on several tracks, they were already on the Lennon wavelength, with drummer Jim Keltner joining Richard Frank, Jr. in providing the backbeat for Wayne 'Tex' Gabriel (lead guitar), Gary Van Scyoc and John Ward (both bass), Stan Bronstein (saxophone), and Adam Ippolito (keyboards).

After the driving start, Lennon slips into the riff-driven `It's So Hard' from Imagine and laces the lyrics with a few double entendres. But he's content to stay on rhythm guitar rather than take any leads and he backs away from the microphone to avoid drawing focus, as his bandmates play their solos. `Welcome to the rehearsal,' he quips, after asking if the music is too loud. The screen splits to cover the musicians when Lennon is singing or show the appreciative audience, whose ranks included Kurt Vonnegut and Allen Ginsberg. They're not shown, however, as Yoko belts through `Move On Fast' from her 1972 album, Approximately Infinite Universe, which is accompanied with rocking vigour.

As Yoko returns to her keyboard, Lennon counts the band into `Well Well Well' from Plastic Ono Band and puts his voice through the ringer, as he screams out the chorus (although, admittedly, not to the raucous point reached on the album track). This version came from the evening concert, but we're back to the matinee for Yoko's `Born in a Prison', which she had written for Some Time in New York City. Her large black sunglasses and his blue-tinted granny glasses come together when the share her microphone for the chorus, but Yoko takes centre stage and gives a dramatic rendition of a song that had lost not relevancy over the intervening decades.

Joking that he hopes the choir comes in on time because they're all alone up here, Lennon sits at an electric piano and invites the audience to join in with `Instant Karma'. The Beatles were still together when this single was released in February 1970 and a sax solo brings a jazzy vibe to the pounding rhythm, although Lennon mumbles, `We'll get it right next time,' after the afternoon version didn't quite hit its straps. Dating from the same year, but from the Plastic Ono Band LP, `Mother' is one of Lennon's most deeply personal songs and the drum and piano fills between the lyrics and the film's use of a tight close-up give it a funereal intensity that suggests Lennon's pain at his relationships with his parents had not eased over time.

`Hope you recognise them,' Lennon sneers at the end of the song, as this is about the majority of parents, `living and half-dead'. He steps to one side for Yoko to do another Some Time in New York City track, `We're All Water'. She loses her way at one point and Lennon has to count her back in, while Bronstein and Gabriel provide a distraction from the screaming that had disturbed Chuck Berry when he and Lennon had duetted on `Memphis, Tennessee' and `Johnny B. Goode' on The Mike Douglas Show in February 1972 (a stint that was recalled in Erik Nelson's fascinating Daytime Revolution, 2024).

Delighting the assembled by venturing back into `the past', Lennon picks his way through the complex lyrics of `Come Together' and jokes at the end that he nearly got all of the words right (although `hairy arsehole' hadn't appeared anywhere on Abbey Road). However, he tells the band that he'll have to stop writing such weird words, as he's getting too old to remember them. The screen splits in three during the fade out, with the audience in the central section, waving the little tambourines that had been given away free.

Returning to the piano and retaining his chewing gum, Lennon performs `Imagine'. Having joked about making sure his finger was on the right note, he put on a funny voice to say `Go in to John, he's starting it and then you can spread it, alright.' But he sings the lyric with due seriousness, as he wouldn't do during his list live performance on The Salute to Lew Grade at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on 18 April 1975, when he also did "Slippin' and a Slidin'" and `Stand By Me' from his Rock `n' Roll album. Yoko sits beside him playing her own keyboard and she smiles when he kisses her shoulder at the end of the song. They kiss again before moving centre stage for Yoko's `Open Your Box', the B side of `Power to the People' in the UK, as Capitol had refused to release it because of its suggestive lyrics and `Touch Me' from Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band was used instead.

After an impassioned performance (complete with an elaborate keyboard solo), Yoko walks calmly back to her seat, as Lennon asks the audience if they opened it just a little bit. He does some effective screaming himself during the withdrawal section of `Cold Turkey', which he had also performed in Toronto in 1969. Ringo Starr had played drums when Yoko recorded `Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For a Hand in the Snow)' for the B side. But Eric Clapton didn't look particularly enamoured when he jammed on it in Toronto. However, this is a much gutsier and tighter version and it certainly went down with the crowd.

Another song reprised from Toronto would wind up proceedings. But Lennon first paid homage to Elvis Presley, with a cover of `Hound Dog', Wearing a white hard hat, Yoko joins in a thrashing rocker which afffords several band members solos before Lennon shouts `Elvis, I love you', during the last stretch. As he dons a red hat, Yoko reads from a speech calling for drastic action to end chaos in a nation. A reggae beat thrums in the background, as she reveals that the author of the description of a situation that doesn't sound unlike the United States in 1972 was Adolf Hitler. Lennon intones, `Law and order, law and order,' to mock President Richard Nixon's approach to keeping control. From this, he leads everyone in a rousing rendition of `Give Peace a Chance', Dispensing with the tongue-twisting verses, Lennon lets an unseen choir and Yoko do much of the singing. Then, borrowing an idea from when The Beatles did `Hey Jude' on Frost on Sunday (just four years earlier), Lennon allows guests to wander on to the stage. Some, like Stevie Wonder, take the vocal strain, while the likes of Phil Spector simply milk the applause. For the record, the others joining in include Wonderlove, Melanie Safka, Allen Ginsberg, Sha Na Na, Geraldo Rivera, Edith Vonnegut, Bernard Carabello, and David Peel's Human Voice Choir. With the audience busy star-spotting, Lennon slips away and Yoko follows, leaving Bronstein to clear the stage and lead Elephant's Memory through the last knockings.

As footage alongside the closing credits shows some Willowbrook children enjoying themselves at a big outdoor party, `Imagine' gets a reprise and details scroll past of those involved in the impeccable restoration of the original footage and the engaging way it has been presented to both show the band in full flow and the audience enjoying them and to capture one of the rare live appearances that actually enjoyed. He scarcely looks or sounds like a Beatle and he's far more assured on stage than he was during the eleventh-hour show in Toronto. Yet he'd hardly gigged in the meantime and it looks and sounds as though he had found his solo feet (albeit with Yoko as his close collaborator).

Opinion will always be divided about her contribution. But she's on fine form here, as she doesn't feel as though she is in John's shadow because his love for and gratitude to her prevents him from hogging the limelight. There are a few flubbed lyrics along the way, but neither seems to mind, especially as the playing of Elephant's Memory is of such high quality. Gebhart's original film had been released on video and failed to persuade critics that it was one of the great concert movies. But John and Yoko trusted him after meeting him during the making of Ten For Two: The John Sinclair Freedom Rally (1971) - which should also be made available on disc - and the producers owe him a huge debt for the directorial decisions he made during on 30 August 1972.

Another song was played at both shows and it's telling that it has been removed. The only single from Some Time in New York City, it had been airbrushed out of the Power to the People boxed set because of its title. Yet, its sentiments remain pertinent and a little imaginative use of AI might have allowed us to hear `Woman Bears the Burden of the World', which is an altogether less contentious refrain. Surely Sean can think of something for, as his father said at the time, `it's something Yoko said to me in 1968 and it took me until 1970 to dig it'. The precise phrasing has dated horribly, but this will remain a message for the ages until society does something to change things.