Noch zijn ezel

‘You shall not covet your neighbour‘s house; you shall not covet your neighbour‘s wife or his male servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbour.’ This is the full text of the tenth and last commandment. In the film that Jos de Putter made on the basis of this commandment, a trudging donkey from the Pyrenees acts as a guide to three different stories about as many forms of desire. Following her husband’s demise, an elderly woman - the director’s mother - receives a letter from a former lover; a shopping assistant starts stealing; and American utopians prepare themselves for a new existence on Mars. To De Putter, the donkey is the biblical animal par excellence; his imperturbable gait is a metaphor for the progress of life.