Well this is an odd film. It's part of our Jacques Demy box set, and I've long been intrigued by it, but Jami lacked my curiosity, so I decided to watch it in the first of man evenings when she's driving back from her NEW JOB at Wayne State (that I have TOLD her to blog about). Apparently it's based on an actual fairy tale by Charles Perrault, the author of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty, which goes to show that the only reason fairy tales don't seem totally bizarre to us is that we're familiar with them. Either that, or this is a particularly warped one. It starts innocently enough, with a happy king and queen (the latter played by Catherine Deneuve in a brown wig) and their daughter (regular Catherine Deneuve). Immediately you are struck by the strange combination of incredible costumes and decor and rather low-budget locations. They're obviously using actual castles, which is understandable, I guess, but they seem a bit stolid next to the incredibly whimsical outfits (I pity the actors having to take themselves at all seriously while poncing around in those outlandish clothes). Anyway, the first jarring moment (after the clothes) is when you are told about the Kings' amazing stables, and then how pride of place is given to a lowly donkey, at which the voice over says something to the effect of "but you'll understand why when you find out about its marvelous gift" and cut to a shot of the stable floor and the donkey's hind hooves, and suddenly a shower of gold coins and jewels crashes down from above. Yes, the donkey SHITS TREASURE. But don't get too attached to it... All is well in this strange kingdom where the color blue predominates to the extent that many of the servants have blue faces (and one statue is actually a naked woman painted blue, whose eyes follow you about). However, very quickly the idyll is destroyed because the queen gets deathly ill. She makes her heartsick husband promise that if he does remarry he must marry somebody more beautiful than her. Then she expires. Distraught, the king rudely sends his daughter out of his sight and goes into full-on mope. However, his advisors believe that the state needs him to re-marry and pressure him, and he grudgingly acquiesces, but insists on honoring his wife's wish. All the princesses thereabout, however, are, while rich, either old or ugly or both. Finally his advisor brings him a painting of the last remaining princess and he finds her ravishing. Guess what? It's his own daughter. And guess what further? He sees this as no barrier to them getting married! Yikes. Fortunately his daughter is not so sanguine and recruits her fairy godmother to help get out of this.
The fairy godmother's plan involves increasingly unreasonable gown-based demands (one that looks like weather, one that is bright as the moon, one that is made of gold), but not only does the King meet every demand, his uncomplaining manner has the daughter softening on going through with the wedding! The final demand that the godmother comes up with is (you guessed it) to demand the skin of that magic donkey. And, despite this probably undermining the economy of the kingdom, the king accedes and leaves the skin on the princess's bed as (he thinks) she sleeps. But instead, the godmother attaches the skin to the princess
and sends her off with a magic wand to a neighboring kingdom (with a red theme, right down to red horses) where she will work for a hideous old woman who spits toads as a scullery maid, and be insulted by all the villagers for her appearance and smell. (However, once inside her forest hut, she magics a very nice bedroom and gets to take the skin off and sit around in her gold dress.)
Pretty soon the prince of the red kingdom, who has been directed to her hut by a magic talking rose, peeks through the window and falls for her, but instead of confronting her he goes home, pines on his bed, and demands that a servant go and ask "Donkey Skin" to bake him a cake. She does, and includes in it her ring, which allows him to do a Cinderella with all the maids of the kingdom, only with them inserting their finger into a ring that only the slenderest of fingers can manage (yes, lots of pervy sexual imagery in this fairy tale). (Humorous scenes of hucksters selling finger-shrinking ointment to desperate suitors.) Finally Donkey Skin shows up and they wed. (But before they officially meet, they meet in a dream and sing a song and moon about. There's a fair amount of singing in this film, but nothing to rival either The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or The Young Girls of Rochefort.) Anyway, the film ends with her father
and the fairy Godmother showing up in a helicopter, whereupon the fairy godmother reveals that she is marrying the king, which is a more plausible explanation for why she was opposed to the princess marrying him than any morality, by which she does not appear particularly motivated.
Very French. But weird even by their standards. Catherine Deneuve certainly proves she's game, at least. Is it a kid's movie? Well, I guess if you're French...
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