Princess

The BBC series Monkey Dust used animation to portray fairly adult themes. In fact, there were many motifs that seem to come directly from that show, as well as the animation style. I suspect the film has either copied this style directly, or their is a shared artistic connection.

The film covers the porn industry and its fallout. It is put together quite skilfully, but has no consistent mood and ends rather sentimentally. The spine is an almost Kill Bill style revenge plot, around which the sharp edges of the real world intrude. The film has heart but no gravity; it weaves a spell around itself but not the audience. So in the end the whole is considerably less than the sum of its well put together parts.

It was a bit of a surprise to discover that the majority of the film consists of animated sequences, with just a bit of grainy video footage (the preview I'd read suggested otherwise) ... but after recovering from that shock, I found the film somehow lacking - whilst watching it, I suspended my disbelief, and was quite take by the characters and winced at the violence. But looking back, it all just seems a bit unreal - whereas thinking back to violent non-animated films, I recall them as violent ... this I just recall as being animated !

At the London Film Festival screening, the director was on stage afterwards for an interesting Q&A - where he defended the slow pace of the film, by insisting that he would have liked to make it faster, but the 1.5m dollar budget didn't allow. He also revealed that part of his inspiration for making the film was the work of Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, whose photos he initially found erotic ... but eventually he considered the women behind the photos, and how they must all be daughters and sisters (an issue he repeatedly brought up). Anders insisted that in Denmark, whilst pornography is openly available, the women involved are regarded as being a sort of underclass - and his film was partly an attempt to expose this hypocrisy. He admitted that they had considered different endings, but the one he chose was the only one that seemed to work !

I knew nothing about this going in and it's not easy to tell what's going on for a good while. The plot reveals itself in a different way than most movies do and until there's a general idea of what's happening, the movie seems like an adult swim knock-off wannabe.

However, once everything is set into place, it's very gripping and stays with you until the end with a great story plus wonderful character depth and development.

The film is part animation and part grainy digital video. The digital video is used to represent a character who is no longer alive shown through home movies at random insertions. The home movies style kinda detracts from the story but it's not all bad, there's an interesting scene where a car crash from the outside is animated and from inside is shown with the grainy video.

Although, for the most part there's animation which is spectacular. I'm not sure if it's a company located outside of the country the film comes from but it's not in the exaggerated anime style. That means the animation is there but you're able to actually focus on the story. The style of animation also makes the violence pretty graphic. Understand that this is an R rated movie for a reason and some parts even in animation are tough to take in.

With proper distribution, this could become a midnight movie cult classic.

Intriguing Film.

With this film Anders Morgenthaler proves that not only is he a very talented cartoonist/comedian, But that he also has a knack for serious, emotional and even disturbing storytelling.

The mixture of "Childish" animation and brutal and disturbing topics such as violence, sex, drugs and pedophilia create a truly unique experience.

This film is possibly one of the most underrated films.

I'm a huge fan of animation and Denmark's Princess from 2006 gives me more reasons to be fan of this genre.

Princess is a recipe for an excellent film. You have a great animation, as well as some originality - there's some live-action also. You have two highly likable characters - August and Mia, and their relationship is what carries the movie. There's a great plot, where some moments make you happy and others - sad. If that isn't enough the film is about darker themes. One other thing I'll point out about Princess is a scene that had an awesome style (I don't want to spoil the scene).

There's nothing in Princess that ruins the experience. A little, microscopic flaw is within the animation at some moments could be polished.

Princess is a must-watch for fans of animation and films and it is an excellent film.