Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story review – a pleasure of a film about an unlikely bond
Beautifully shot among Shetland’s epic scenery, Charlie Hamilton James’s documentary follows Billy and wife Susan, as Molly changes their lives in the most uplifting way
This rather lovely film tells the story of a man called Billy Mail, and his otter – a pup he rescued after spotting it half-starved on the pontoon bobbing in the Atlantic at the bottom of his garden in Shetland. Billy called the otter Molly, and started feeding it. On the voiceover his wife, Susan, says Molly took over their lives, and she’s not kidding. By the end of the film, Molly is living in a handbuilt miniature bothy in the garden, dining on haddock; we get to feast on Shetland’s epic scenery, beautifully shot by wildlife cameraman and National Geographic photographer Charlie Hamilton James.
Otters are apparently extremely shy, so Molly must be desperate, Billy reasoned when he found her in March 2021. He bought a book about otters, which was no help at all trying to raise a pup, so he made it up as he went along. “I felt a bit daft sometimes,” he says over footage of himself filling a tub with brightly coloured plastic balls for Molly to play in. But, like a good mummy otter, his plan was to get Molly to the point where she could go it alone and survive the winter. Susan wonders if the relationship flipped from Billy keeping Molly going to the other way round.
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