DONKEY SKIN Movie Review

Peau d'Ane

As if to imagine a Hollywood musical as filmed by Jean Cocteau (years before Disney's Beauty and the Beast, mind you), Jacques Demy and musical collaborator Michel Legrand continued the partnership that began with their The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with this bizarrely straightforward yet surprisingly engaging fairy tale. Jean Marais (Cocteau's Beast in his Beauty and the Beast) is the widower king who refuses to marry a woman less beautiful than his dead queen, so he settles on his daughter. Since she's played by Catherine Deneuve, we can't exactly blame him, but it is a little tough to explain to kids why the king's plan is undesirable. All ends well, the scenery and costumes are clever and colorful, and the Legrand songs are never worse than harmless (some are better than that). Delphine Seyrig makes a knockout fairy godmother, but it's Marais's resonant presence that provides Donkey Skin with its emotional center.

NEXT STOP … Lola, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacquot de Nantes.

1970 89m/C FR Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marais, Delphine Seyrig, Jacques Perrin. D: Jacques Demy; C: Ghislan Cloquet; M: Michel Legrand. VHS NO