David Verbeek

I’m not going to start this review in the usual way but with something akin to a recap of its opening moments and part of the first act. I know you’re likely wondering why, and it’s because those scenes, literally, hit me in the head: Making its world premiere at Tribeca this year, The Wolf, the Fox and the Leopard begins with a radio scan, scrolling through the news of several natural disasters caused by climate change. A woman begins to narrate over a black screen in Japanese: “In the beginning, there was no story…” We see the tops of green trees: “The forest was breathing in and out peacefully. But a fever was taking hold of the world. An era was ending…” We drop to the forest floor, where brown and green ferns reach upward, searching for the light: “And it was precisely at this crucial time that she would enter our world.”