Do Elephants Pray?

Do elephants pray? Who knows. But by the end of this toe-curling British film you might be begging for a stampede to trample its protagonist, Callum (Jonnie Hurn). He’s meant to be a hotshot ad exec – London’s answer to Don Draper in the leftfield genius stakes. Except Callum’s got the charisma of potato peelings (think Ralph Fiennes as a bank manager). Which possibly explains why his business is on the skids. Enter a tree-hugger with a cute French accent, Malika (Julie Dray), for some self-consciously awful romance. In one scene she dribbles red wine into Callum’s mouth (on a cream rug!). Worse than the clunky acting, though, is the soul-crushingly phoney deep ’n’ meaningful streak in the script. Turns out Malika is a bit of a free-spirit – in a howl-at-the-moon kind of way – whisking Callum off to a forest to embrace the emptiness of existence. My tip for a zen life is to look elsewhere for answers.