La belle endormie

The princess Anastasia is cursed by the witch Carabosse (Rosine Favey) to die but three teenage fairies change it and the girl falls into a deep sleep for one hundred years to wake-up as a sixteen year-old teenager.

Along her dream, Anastasia (Carla Besnaïnou) takes a ghost train and is adopted by a woman that lives in the woods with her son Peter (Kérian Mayan) that becomes her stepbrother. Soon Peter is seduced by the Snow Queen (Romane Portail) and leaves home with her.

Anastasia seeks him out and travels through the kingdom of albino King and Queen that offer her a stagecoach to help her to travel. However Anastasia is attacked by gypsy bandits that kidnap her, but she befriends a gypsy girl that offers a magic animal to ride in her quest. Out of the blue, the sixteen year-old Anastasia (Julia Artamonov) is awaken by Peter's grandson Johan (David Chausse).

"La belle endormie", a.k.a. "Sleeping Beauty" by French director Catherine Breillat, is a boring movie with a messy screenplay in an eerie adult view of the classic fairytale.

"The Sleeping Beauty" is a classic fairytale originally written by the French Charles Perrault and later by the German Brothers Grimm that was immortalized by the animated version by Walt Disney. This television version by Catherine Breillat is another obscure and forgettable modern retelling of the fairytale. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

In her second deconstruction of a classic fairy tale, Catherine Breillat has taken on the story of The Sleeping Beauty as first imagined by Charles Perrault in the seventeenth century. In turning the sweet children's fairy tale into a coming of age fantasy filled with sexual tension, Breillat challenges our conventional notions of childhood and asks us to confront our fears about growing up, a topic far removed from the banalities of Walt Disney animation. Like her previous work Bluebeard, Breillat's version of The Sleeping Beauty establishes the world of children as one filled with both terror and unimagined beauty. It is a world that is playful, erotic, frightening, and magical.

In the classic tale, a wicked fairy curses a young infant girl by proclaiming that when she reaches the age of 15, she will prick her finger on a spindle and die. Unable to completely reverse the spell, one of the good fairies says that the princess will instead sleep for a hundred years until awakened by the kiss of a prince with whom she will live happily ever after. In Breillat's version, the infant is cursed by the fairy Carabosse (Rosine Favey) to die at an early age as three good fairies (Dounia Sichov, Leslie Lipkins and Camille Chalons) stand by.

The good fairies cannot reverse the witch's curse but they can modify it, declaring that the girl at age six will fall into a sleep for 100 years and then wake up as a beautiful 16-year old teen. The girl, Anastasia (Carla Besainou), evoking Alice in Wonderland, looks for her love in dream sequences that fill the majority of the 82-minute film. In the vividly imagined dreamscape, Anastasia rebels against the notion of girls as princesses who are asked to be polite and stay out of sight. She declares that she wishes her name was Vladimir and discards her furs and dainty dresses. In the first sequence, one of the best, she visits a French family in a remote forest where she is lovingly taken in by a widow (Anne-Lise Kedves), then becomes enamored with her teenage son (Kerian Mayan) in scenes that evoke a world of innocence and purity.

The boy, however, is lured by the mythical Snow Queen (Romane Portail) even though warned by his mother and turns hardhearted and cold. Undaunted by his sudden turn, the young Anastasia looks up the definition of the word puberty in the dictionary and then goes to search for him. In scenes of breathtaking beauty created by the cinematography of Denis Lenoir and the art direction of Francois-Renaud Labarthe, Anastasia traverses a world of magical trains, albino rulers, dwarf station masters, a knife-wielding gypsy, and enchanted animals.

Although Anastasia says that she hates the world of little girls, she exists in a world of enduring childhood, all created from the dark imaginings and erotic longings of her mind which become real when the now sixteen year old Anastasia (Julia Artamanov) at last wakes from her dream and experiences loves from both a woman, Gypsy girl (Rhizlaine El Cohen), and a man, Johan (David Chausse), the great grandson of Peter. The Sleeping Beauty continues in the mode that Breillat is known for - exploring the world of female sexuality by using a fairy tale to encompass both the safe and the loving as well as the dangerous and forbidden, always threatening our comfort levels, yet providing a grand piece of entertainment.

Putting a finger on Sleeping Beauty is difficult. It was first published by Charles Perrault in 1697, from a story by Giambattista Basile. I was re-imagined by Walt Disney in the most popular version. However, the true version is much darker and approaches a horror story. Maybe children of an earlier time were not so protected.

Breillat puts her own stamp on the story, bringing back closer to it's roots. She even mashes it with Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen.

As Sleeping Beauty (Carla Besnaïnou) wanders in a dream state, she is exposed to various traumas regarding love and loss. She develops socially, psychologically, and sexually to take her place in the world when she awakens 100 years later at 16 (Julia Artamonov). It is sometimes difficult for those who grew up on Disney, but the time invested is well worth it.

Breillat has now completed two of her fairy tale trilogy films. Bluebeard was first, and we anxiously await her interpretation of Beauty and the Beast.

The Sleeping Beauty (2010)

** (out of 4)

Director Catherine Breillat's second straight adaptation of a Charles Perrault fairy tale. While this one here fairs much better than the previous BLUEBEARD, there's still no question that there are some problems keeping it from being a good movie. An evil witch is at the birth of a new baby girl and places a curse on her saying that she will die at the age of 16. Minutes later three good witches get on the scene and while they can't break the curse they can at least make it easier. They make it that the girl will fall asleep at the age of 6 and remain that way for one-hundred years but when she wakes up she'll still only be the age of 16. THE SLEEPING BEAUTY has some very interesting things going on in it and it starts off rather strongly but as the girl's mission kept going the interest level started to drop. I thought the first thirty-minutes were rather interesting because the story made for something that should have worked much better. I thought the early scenes showing the girl getting ready to set off on this journey was interesting and I thought her first stop, to a new family with an older brother, featured some good stuff. From this point on the film started to lose me and especially when the various stops that the girl goes through. All of these look very good visual and there are some great looking scenes but sadly all of them are rather slow and seem to go nowhere. Carla Besainou plays the 6-yaer-old girl and does a very good job with the part. I thought she was quite charming and managed to carry the performance in a very believable fashion. The supporting players are all nice as well but no one can really save this picture. THE SLEEPING BEAUTY is aimed more at adults with its nudity and thoughts on sexuality but these just aren't enough to make it worth viewing outside of the director's fans.

It's a bold choice on the part of filmmaker Catherine Breillat to have shaped this feature as she did, declining any exposition and just throwing us into the story. However, it's not just that this is written with the assumption that viewers are already familiar with the supposed source material or other adaptations. More than that, Breillat introduces countless new elements into her interpretation(s) that are altogether flummoxing, often with little or no connectivity or flow from one scene to the next. A few isolated facets of the writing are excellent, and ripe for storytelling (mostly nearer the start) - but on the other hand, far too much of the dialogue, scene writing, and so-called narrative just make no sense. In fact, what 'La belle endormie' represents more than anything is a loose arthouse variation on classic fairy tales. There's nothing wrong with that, and nothing wrong with trying something new and different. The problems are twofold. First is that any loftier notions and pretenses Breillat might have wished to infuse into her picture absolutely do not come across in the finished product. Second, even if we accept the most whimsical and abstruse conceptions of what a narrative could possibly be, the plot and its development are so chopped up and incohesive, broaching incoherence, that from the beginning it barely holds itself together. By the time we finish watching, it altogether falls apart.

I don't know if it's Breillat's screenplay, her direction, or the cast, but the fundamental orchestration of shots and scenes is bizarrely, extraordinarily weak. Some instances feel like first takes, or rehearsals; other moments come across as B-roll that somehow made it into the final cut. Too much of the presentation comes off as halfhearted, inchoate, or unpracticed, if not outright floundering - and almost never more than halfway solid and complete. I suppose in some fashion this is peculiarly appropriate for a title where the writing is all over the place, but that's no compliment. Sure, the crew behind the scenes turned in excellent work - filming locations, production design, art direction, effects, costume design, hair, makeup, cinematography, music, and so on. Unfortunately, none of those aspects really matter. One is perhaps accustomed to fairy tales being Just So, declining world-building and giving us a saga that is entirely self-contained; other movies telling original stories in the realm of fantasy and adventure have adopted a similar approach, to great success. However, fairy tales and other such movies still need to be, and are, internally consistent. 'La belle endormie' is scattered to the winds, a conglomeration that's effectively strung together with a thread that ultimately turns out to be not just invisible but intangible. Factor in how flimsy the execution is from one moment to the next, and I barely even know what to say any more.

Someone understands what Breillat was doing here, and appreciates it. I'm not that person. I sat to watch with no foreknowledge or expectations. At rare, irregular intervals I saw something I liked. Down to the very last minutes, however, this is baffling, outrageously erratic and nonsensical, and whittles down any possible favor I might have bestowed upon it until there's none left to give. I rather wonder if Breillat wasn't actually playing a prank on prospective audiences by making this, seeing if she could lure us in with her name or the picture's only to instead give us... well, whatever this is. I don't know. All I know is that when all is said and done I have no idea what she was actually attempting with 'La belle endormie.' I congratulate those who have, and they're welcome to it. I'm done.