PEAU D'ANE (OR DONKEY SKIN)

After the mahjong session on last Saturday, we made our way to The Cathay to catch an evening screening of the classic French film – Peau D'Ane (or Donkey Skin), which was one of the featured films for the 23rd Singapore French Film Festival.

Synopsis (Spoiler??!!):

There was (once upon a time, what else?) a king of a strange and distant land who had everything he ever wanted – a beauteous and charming queen, and beautiful young daughter, a powerful and peaceful kingdom, and last but not least, his banker – a donkey which excretes jewels and gold coins. However, the queen was struck suddenly with a cruel malady and on her deathbed, demanded a promise from the king to never marry a woman who was less beautiful than she.

The king grieves for a while, but reality intrudes in the form of his cabinet, who reminds him that he had no male heir and demands that he marry again to beget the necessary male issues. The king reluctantly agrees, provided that a princess more beautiful than his late wife could be found.

The king’s cabinet, unsuccessful in their search in neighbouring lands, suggests that the king look to his own daughter, who is the only princess who equals, if not exceeds, the late queen in beauty, intelligence and charm. Convinced and perhaps helped into love by circumstances and the princess’s attributes, the king requests his daughter to marry him.

Shocked, the princess seeks help from the Lilac Fairy, her fairy godmother (who has a secret yen for the king, it seems). The Lilac Fairy advises the princess to discourage the king by setting impossible tasks to complete, such as requesting dresses the colour of the weather, the moon and the sun, and finally the skin of the king’s jewel excreting donkey. The king duly completes all, even reluctantly sacrificing his banker, to win her heart.

Convinced of his love for her and half tempted to give in, the princess nevertheless flees the kingdom at the urging of the Lilac Fairy (who probably had ulterior motives for doing so), wearing the donkey skin. She flees to an isolated farm where she accepted work as a lowly scullion in charge of the pig sties and is jeered at by others for being dirty and smelly.

With the help of her godmother, she schemes to meet and seduce the young prince of the land into falling in love with her. The subsequent story is somewhat reminiscent of Cinderella. The prince returns home lovesick, and asks for a cake baked by Peau D’Ane (Donkey Skin - the disguised princess). The princess does so and hides her ring in the cake, which the prince finds. The prince then announces to all in the land that the maiden whom the ring could fit perfectly would become his wife. The disguised princess puts on the ring and throws off the donkey skin to resume her original looks.

The couple marries and the king attends the ceremony with his new wife, the Lilac Fairy (see, I told you she had ulterior motives), in a helicopter (??!!) no less. And they lived happily ever after, or so it seems.

The French seems to get a kick out of fairy tales with a twist. The last one I happened to catch was a black and white version of Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bete), with a slightly weird Beauty and a strange storyline. In some ways, the unconventional storyline of Peau D’Ane reminds me a little of the 1946 film.

The slightly incestuous theme at the beginning of the movie was handled rather well and subtly, and did not really strike any disgust or discomfort in me. I did think it was rather “interesting” when the princess confessed that she did not mind marrying the king when he appeared to love her so, and she also returned the affection, since this was not the sort of sentiment one expected in a pure and innocent fairy tale princess. I thought it also spoke volumes on a typical woman’s attitude to love – Love me, and I won’t care who you are or what you do.

The princess seemed to bounce between a few extreme natures during her sojourn at the farm. One moment, she appeared this meek, long suffering and pitiful waif and I really pitied her and wished her situation would get better. In the blink of an eye, she would transform into this vain, pampered and manipulative vixen with a mysterious smile and a plotting glimmer in her eyes. The next moment she would be back to the innocent and sweet princess. It was quite hard to pin her down and I couldn’t decide if I liked her character, or not. But she certainly was interesting.

The love story between the prince and the princess was really not much of a love story at all, and I doubt it was meant to be. I got the message that the prince was into this “relationship”, for want of a better word, because he was bored, and the princess was more interesting than anything else happening to him then. The princess, to my way of thinking, was obviously manipulating him into marriage because that was the best way out of her current situation. It was hard to feel romantic about the story under these circumstances.

The entire movie was peppered with interesting and amusing little touches. Like the dress the colour of good weather – that was a blue dress with running shadows projected onto it to represent clouds. I thought it looked like stormy weather, personally. The “witch” running the farm who spits frogs. The red horses and knights of the prince and the blue-faced servants of the king – is there a hidden message in the colours? The Ball of the Cats and Birds, with the chamber orchestra dressed as pigs. The whole scene where the maidens in the land were trying on the ring was a laugh a minute. The Lilac Fairy’s obscure references to the modern era. The helicopter that the king and the Lilac Fairy arrived in to attend the princess’s wedding (the references were not so obscure now). The parade of gifts from kings of other lands – Cats from Siam, Camels from Arabia and so on. And the princess’s look of disappointment when her father informed her that he had married her fairy godmother was very, very interesting indeed.

For a 70’s production, I thought it was a pretty sophisticated effort. The movie did not seem very badly dated even when viewed nearly thirty years later (Fairytale kingdoms obviously never get outdated). The costumes and sets were all rather colourful and dramatic and added to the feel of a fairy tale kingdom. I was pretty relieved upon seeing the costumes of the males especially, as for some reason, I half expected to see sheer hose, unsightly “bulges” and horrors of horrors – Codpieces! I never forgot Drew Barrymore’s Ever After (the cinderella story) where these things were prominently featured.

All-in-all, it was an interesting and amusing production and I am glad I did catch it in the end. We also had no idea so many people would be interested in classic French movies, since the cinema theatre was rather full, even if it was a small theatre.

Wonder what other entertainment the girls will dig up next.