French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has established herself as a daring director willing to take risks and to explore subject matter that others would never ever consider (Fat Girl, The Last Mistress). In her last film, she offered her creative take on Bluebeard and now she has fashioned The Sleeping Beauty, another production based on a fairy-tale. It registers on the senses as a blend of Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty and Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen.
At her birth Princess Anastasia has the misfortune of being cursed by a crone (Rosine Favey) to die young. But three fairies (Dounia Sichov, Leslie Lipkins, Camille Chalons) decide to change the curse so that the child will fall asleep when she is 6 years of age and wake up 100 years later as a young woman of 16.
The girl Anastasia (Carla Besnainou) begins a quest that will take her to many places in a series of dreams. On her journeys she is exposed to the childhood traumas and tribulations connected with love, letting go, and loss. In her first experience, Anastasia is given a place to stay by a widow (Anne-Lise Kedves) who has an adolescent son (Kerian Mayan). When the Snow Queen (Romane Portail) leads him away, Anastasia follows in hopes of finding him.
Writer and director Breillat seems to be deriving a great deal of pleasure from the fairy tale world where women are stretched and challenged to grow, change, and develop socially, psychologically, and sexually. The splintered storyline is sometimes hard to follow but those who are patient enough will derive some satisfaction from a film totally centered on a little girl's adventures. Nowadays this is a rarity and one to be celebrated.
Screened at The Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2011 of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Unifrance in March.
