Donkey Skin (Peau d' Ane, 1970)

Director: Jacques Demy
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Delphine Seyrig, Jacques Perrin, Jean Marais
Duration: 89'
Production Year: 1970

In the middle of the 17th century, Charles Perrault gathered a large sum of the urban myths that were passed on orally from one generation to the next and wrote them down, maintaining to date the title of the father of fairytale as we know it in its written form. Disney might have grabbed from his fairytales stories such as "Cinderella" and the "Sleeping Beauty", but it would never dare deal with "Donkey Skin", which despite Perrault's varnished version retained in its core a taboo subject. That of the King wanting to marry his daughter.

Influenced by a trip to Los Angeles (where he shot "Model Shop") and the emerging hippie culture there, Jacques Demy saw in the content of the story the opportunity for a special pageantry, a film-dream which nobody would ever want to be finished. With Jean Marais as the King and Catherine Deneuve as the daughter, Demy took the meaning of film exaggeration to a new level through the incredible costumes, the special effects of the time, the song in the tunes of Michel Legrand and the rainbows creating not only a festival of colors but also being the tools of an ambiguous narration.

What he accomplished was to visualise an urban myth in a way that it could be watched in the cinema by parents with their children and each would stay satisfied for completely different reasons, something that became obvious from the box office success that the french audience reserved for the film, acknowledging it as the director's most successful work. It remains too, however, to date a unique spectacle, made to be watched on the silver screen. Tasos Melemenidis

Screening in collaboration with the Plein Air Festival of the French Institute Greece.

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