Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A fairy godmother helps a princess disguise herself so she won't have to marry her father.
Jacques Demy's adaptation of the Perrault fairy tale is a visually ravishing and tonally singular work — pastel-drenched, anachronistic, and playfully surreal in a way that is unmistakably his own. The cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet is sumptuous, with colour design and costume work that feels like a living storybook. Novelty is very high: Demy's fusion of the fairy tale with pop sensibility, Michel Legrand's songs, and deliberate camp-meets-earnestness is wholly distinctive. The plot, faithfully derived from Perrault, is slight and episodic — charming but thin. The ending, while conventionally happy, arrives abruptly and feels perfunctory, undercutting some of the film's more subversive undertones. Acting is warm and committed (Catherine Deneuve is luminous) but not especially demanding of the cast.