Piel de asno

I saw this movie for the first time in the movies when I was a little girl. I never forgot it, I never forgot the main song. For years I tried to find it in the video stores, I wish it was released in DVD. This is a cult-fantasy movie and deserves to be more available to the general public. Nowadays the "fantasy" movies have a lot of silliness and disgusting behavior due to lack of imagination of new filmmakers. Movies like Peau d'ane should not be forgotten and should be re-released so the new generation can learn to appreciate true art. Catherine Deneuve is in the top of her beauty in this movie, the clothes are wonderful, the music unforgettable.

Weird, yes and off-putting to some, but this is a classic French "conte de fée" (fairy tale) by Charles Perrault.

This man was also responsible for Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.

The stories in Mother Goose also stemmed from his work.

If you think about it, many of these stories contain weird or gruesome elements but are now all considered classics which we read to our children, albeit in somewhat doctored form.

So, weird to Americans, but normal to the French.

One cannot deny that the picture is beautifully filmed, and that the color is truly outstanding.

We should note that Jacques Demy also directed the Umbrellas of Cherbourg and the Young Girls of Rochefort. There is a great similarity in attitude and art if one compares these three films of his.

To me, Donkey Skin (Peau d'Ane) is like Jean Cocteau reborn into the French New Wave(!). Gorgeous and stylized, it's a fairytale told with the cinematic magic we've come to expect from director Jacques Demy. This is a fairytale that adults will enjoy more than children, as it's full of dark humor. Ms. Deneuve is stunning as always, and the sassy fairy is also wonderful. Surreal and bizarre, Donkey Skin traps you into its world of bold colors, real-life french châteaux, living statues, and loads of fairy magic. But Demy doesn't seem content to let the viewer completely lose him/herself in the world he's created. The movie is full of self-references, something Demy had partly explored earlier with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but really let himself have fun with in Donkey Skin. For just when you come to believe the magic, Demy likes to remind you that this is just a movie. With only a smudge of dirt and an animal skin, the beautiful princess (Deneuve) is transformed on screen into the ugliest girl in the entire kingdom, so ugly that whenever she shares the screen with other characters, they all look on in horror. We still see a beautiful woman, under the dirt on her face and the donkey skin on her back, and we are reminded that this is only a movie-world. The helicopter is an amazing touch, and it made the movie for me. I won't say more, see it for yourself! (The reprint is currently making its rounds and is well worth it!)

Jacques Demy is a French maker who is famous for his musicals such as "les parapluies de Cherbourg" or "les demoiselles de Rochefort". For this movie, he chose to adapt a fairy tale written by Charles Perrault during the seventeenth century and he wisely chose. This movie is a real treat, an absolute enchantment and rare are the movies that succeed in recreating the wonderful atmosphere of fairy tales. Everything, here, reaches a level of perfection rarely reached: sceneries and costumes are marvellous, especially the rooms of the first castle that you see at the beginning of the movie. Moreover, a part of it was made at Chambord. Then, the music is really gorgeous and the songs ravishing. I also noticed that Demy introduced a contemporary humor which contains numerous anachronisms. For example, near the end of the film, Jean Marais appears in a helicopter! However, the story takes place in the seventeenth century. How strange it is... Don't forget, a performance of quality. Catherine Deneuve is an ideal and delicate princess but Jean Marais is probably the best actor in the movie. He's very convincing in his role of tormented and jaded king. Besides, it was his last role for the cinema. After that, he's given over to painting and sculpture. Even if certain special effects are a little kitsch, the movie is impregnated with a lot of poetry. So, at the end, a movie that seduces the eyesight and the hearing and this is one of Demy's masterpieces.

If ever you need any kind of indication that fairy tales were not always excessively cute stories to entertain children, look no further than Jacques Demy's movie version of Charles Perrault's "Peau d'ane" ("Donkey Skin" in English). I had heard some about the story but until now never known the specific plot. The events during the first part of the movie imply that it must have been harder to gross people out in the 17th century.

But once Donkey Skin (Catherine Deneuve) flees, the film becomes almost a different movie. Aside from the fact that she now has to live among the peasants and do lowly work, her experiences with the prince (Jacques Perrin) take on a dimension of their own. The movie has a hippie-like quality, what with the colors and the fact that Donkey Skin and the prince set out to break the rules. And finally at the end, a deliberate anachronism; not only has the film had several contrasts between colors, there's a contrast between old and modern. This is truly a movie unlike any other.

So while I do recommend the film, I should remind you that this is not really a movie for the little ones. Seriously, some of the stuff in the first part of the movie was the sort of stuff that one would expect in a Farrelly brothers movie. No matter; as a whole, the movie is one that you'll probably never forget. Also starring Jean Marais, Delphine Seyrig, Micheline Presle and Fernand Ledoux.

PS: in a DVD featurette about the production, they note that Jim Morrison visited the set. Now there was something that Charles Perrault never could have predicted!