4.5/5

Review by John P. Harvey.

The second-most-translated literary work in the world, a children’s novella titled The Little Prince, about the interplanetary adventures of a pilot, was published in English and French in the United States in 1943, while its French author lived there in effective exile following the signing of a 1940 armistice between France and Germany. That author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was himself a pilot and shortly afterward flew reconnaissance missions for the French; but he had already published several novels on the basis of his experience as an airmail pilot in Argentina in the 1920s.

Saint-Ex dramatises these parts of Saint-Exupéry’s life, focusing on a period in which Saint-Exupéry (played by Louis Garrel) worked for the airmail company Aéropostale. In a tale that probably amalgamates features of a number of rescue missions that Saint-Exupéry actually undertook, we initially see Saint-Exupéry rescued by his staunch fellow pilot Henri Guillaumet (Vincent Cassel).

Saint-Exupéry later has the chance to repay Guillaumet. Saint-Exupéry and Guillaumet devise an innovation to let Guillaumet attempt to the seemingly impossible: overflying the hazardous Cordillera mountain range. When Guillaumet disappears in the attempt, only Saint-Exupéry is left to rescue him before he must succumb to hypothermia. What follow are Saint-Exupéry’s ingenious attempts to do so, with the help of Guillaumet’s increasingly desperate wife, Noëlle (Kiane Kruger).

Though this lovely film features much physical adventure, it balances it beautifully with quietly inspiring conversations and moments of contemplation and invention in the race to save Guilaumet. With its somewhat antique colouration, Saint-Ex puts us right there, on the ground and in the air, sharing the isolated but dynamic life that these pilots, ground crew, and administrative staff lived to the full, and lets us empathise fully with the film’s talented lead characters.