Donkey Skin (Peau d’Ane)

This film completes an implicit trilogy with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort -- for director Jacques Demy, star Catherine Deneuve, and composer Michel Legrand. It’s a beautifully literal-minded translation of a fairy tale from the same pen as Cinderella, viewing the most extravagant tale with a child’s matter-of-fact logic of magic. Kind of creepy, as many genuine fairy tales are. Dying Queen makes King promise not to marry again unless he finds a wife more beautiful. He looks around but finds none more beautiful than his daughter. He proposes and she is shocked, but not inclined to refuse until her fairy godmother straightens her out, counseling her to make escalating demands, up to asking for the skin of the King’s fabulous gold-shitting donkey. The King is undetered in his misguided love, so the godmother has to whisk the Princess away and hide her under the cloak of the donkey skin, until she is discovered by the Prince of her dreams. Kinky stuff -- more Cocteau than Disney. One of many homages to Cocteau is Jean Marais as the King, very much as he was as the beast in La Belle et la Bete. Catherine Deneuve is every inch a Princess, even when smeared with grime and covered with a rather grisly donkey skin, and Delphine Seyrig is a swanky godmother. (Amusing sidelight: the Prince, Jacques Perrin, went on to become director of the great documentary Winged Migration.) The plot of the story is a foregone conclusion, but the details of its visualization are a continuing surprise and delight. Special effects are few, but the effects of costume, location, and camera are definitely special. (1970, dvd, n.) *7-*