The Vel­vet Queen

Whistling winds, qui­et whis­pers, and the long­ing for the per­fect intro­duc­tion to elu­sive parts of nature are core to The Vel­vet Queen. It’s a hyp­not­ic les­son in watch­ful pho­to­jour­nal­ism, offer­ing an insight­ful take on a quest to liaise with wildlife in its nat­ur­al habi­tat – in this case, the rare Tibetan snow leopard.

Wan­der­ing the peaks are Vin­cent Munier, a wildlife pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and his writer friend Syl­vain Tes­son, who aim to climb great heights through extreme weath­er con­di­tions and lock eyes on their prize. Through its cin­e­matog­ra­phy alone we soon find out this is no Ani­mal Plan­et special.

The scenery is breath­tak­ing, open and often paralysing in its grandeur. Shots of wind lift­ing sand and fil­ter­ing it through the open air almost per­son­i­fies the pair’s jour­ney of time pass­ing with no guar­an­tee of a sight­ing. Nick Cave and War­ren Ellis’s haunt­ing score cap­tures the mood of explo­ration in Tibet – cer­tain­ly some­thing more som­bre than your typ­i­cal nature doc. Tesson’s nar­ra­tion at one-point weeps of self-deter­mi­na­tion, describ­ing the leop­ard seek­ing jour­ney as, ​“For me, a dream – for him, a ren­dezvous.” Lyri­cism appears to be key, and there’s per­haps too much at times.

The film’s title sig­ni­fies the majes­tic nature of its sub­ject, an ode to the slen­der feline and the infre­quen­cy of its sight­ing. The process of this search yields much addi­tion­al inter­est as we see numer­ous aspects of wildlife through­out the doc – antelopes, wolves, bears just to name a few.

At one point both Munier and Tes­son are in awe of being present with these oth­er ani­mals, but you can’t help but feel that they’re just hold­ing time as they eager­ly wait to catch a glimpse of the snow leop­ard. And while they patient­ly wait, the audi­ence too must adopt the same mind­set, and the film is essen­tial­ly about the con­cept of delayed gratification.

And [mini spoil­er alert], this wait­ing game is def­i­nite­ly worth it, despite the poet­ic lengths it takes to get there. Numer­ous near-miss­es and video teas­es lat­er, you can see the self-accep­tance that Munier and Tes­son have adopt­ed to jus­ti­fy their endeav­our. ​“Scorn pain, ignore time, and nev­er doubt you’ll get what you desire,” Tes­son nar­rates. This sums up the heart of the film – that patience is key, knowl­edge is essen­tial, and hope real­ly is all we have to get us through the day.

In the end they get what they desire – both seen in com­plete awe just metres away from the snow leop­ard in all its win­tery glo­ry. The Vel­vet Queen cuts the tra­di­tion­al nature doc through with a philo­soph­i­cal edge which at times may feel suf­fo­cat­ing, but you can’t argue with its mak­ers’ ado­ra­tion of nature.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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