Francophiles are going to be very happy this weekend when a new 35mm print of Demy’s 1970 fairy tale musical, Donkey Skin, opens at the Music Box and the French sci-fi digital effects spectacular Immortel (ad vitam), lands at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
Donkey Skin, based on a lesser-known Perrault fairytale, was the third collaboration between French icon Catherine Deneuve and writer/director Jacques Demy. It was released in 1970 after the international acclaim that greeted The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort. But Donkey Skin (or Peau d’ne in its native tongue), though the least known of the trio, is in my estimation, the best. It’s a feast for the effete sophisticate: a fairy tale that pays visual homage to Jean Cocteau, co-stars his lover Jean Marais, focuses on the ethereal exquisiteness of Deneuve, and features a raft of delicate, witty Michel Legrand and Demy pop songs.
The story centers on a widowed king (Marais) who has promised his late wife (Deneuve) that he will not wed again until he finds a worthy successor in the beauty department. Naturally, his daughter (also played by Deneuve), the princess, is the only candidate with the requisite good looks. The idea of incest doesn’t seem to bother the king but the princess isn’t exactly thrilled. With the aid of the Lilac Fairy (the worldly Delphine Seyrig), she at first demands that her father deliver three impossible-to-make dresses before agreeing to the marriage. When that fails, she next demands the skin of the donkey. Though this donkey is the key to the kingdom’s wealth (it defecates precious jewels and golden coins!) the king only momentarily pauses before giving in. At this point, the fairy godmother helps the princess disguise herself in the donkey skin so she can escape to the countryside where further adventures—and a handsome prince await.
The sweet, put-upon Deneuve shines in a justly famous sequence in which she sings while baking a ‘love cake’ in order to capture the prince and early in the film when glimpsed playing a blue organ in the castle courtyard oblivious to her father’s plans. Meanwhile, Marais, decked out in silver lame and purple (it’s an outfit that must have inspired LaBelle’s costume designer), stomps about in his best Beauty and the Beast prissy fashion, demanding the return of his daughter. Eventually, he succumbs to the charms of the still sexy Seyrig, a sort of French matchmaker in the Dolly Levi mold.
The whole can accurately be described as a creampuff. See www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Another fairy tale, a futuristic one is Immortel (ad vitam), the first film that Yugoslav-born graphic novelist Enki Bilal has directed (and co-written). Like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Sin City, the French-made Immortel was filmed placing actors against digital backgrounds. Like its American counterparts, Immortel is visually stylish and visually dazzling and emotionally tepid. Still in its infancy, these all-CGI motivated pictures are quickly losing their potency for me. Though Immortel is set in New York of 2095, however, it still contains plenty of typical French musings on the soul of man and a concern for fashion.
The plot concerns a mysterious pyramid hovering over Manhattan, home to three Egyptian gods. Horus, god of the sky, needs to repopulate in seven days or perish. The other two gods stay in the pyramid playing Monolopy while Horus goes in search of the perfect male specimen to inhabit and a comely female specimen to copulate with. He finds both in our hero Nikopol (the East German heartthrob Thomas Kretschmann) and the blue-haired heroine Jill, she of the special powers (Linda Hardy). Charlotte Rampling plays Elma Turner, a doctor trying to figure out why Jill is different from other humans in a world where organ transplanting and plastic surgery is as common as getting new glasses.
Bilal, who has combined two of his three Nikopol graphic novels into the movie, has a large following in the comic book world and has created a visual tour de force with this first movie. He is greatly aided by the physical presence of his two stars, Kretschmann and Hardy, and by Rampling, who, even in a throwaway role, burns a hole in the screen. That these three register with a force that is only suggested by the CGI characters certainly bodes well for flesh and blood actors. Even with all the visual pyrotechnics on display here, it’s still Kretschmann’s haunted eyes, Hardy’s impossibly gorgeous face and Rampling’s world weary manner that still resonate. Humans, it seems, are still the best special effects. In English.
See www.siskelfilmcenter.org.