Since her career’s inception, writing an erotic novel at age 17 that was then banned in France to those under the age of 18, director Catherine Breillat has explored our sexual nature and our need to be in control, like no other film maker. Coldly clinical analyses of human nature, like the work of Stanley Kubrick, but more declaratively nihilistic and with extreme, graphic sex scenes, she now turns to a classic cautionary fairy tale.
In Bluebeard, a father dies performing a selfless act and two sisters must return home from a convent. The family now impoverished and their education ended, one sister decides to become the wife of an aristocrat of whom tales are told of his previous wives’ demises. This sister, Marie-Catherine (Lola Créton), though too young for the marriage bed proper, beguiles the imposing Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) and after they are wed they become devoted, but chaste companions. There is the matter of a locked door and an admonishment to know your place and obey the rules. As always, the core lesson fairy tales were meant to impart and just the themes that are Breillat’s stock in trade to kick against, if not completely knock down.
Still, Bluebeard is unlike Breillat’s other work. It’s reasonably sedate for her. There are only two mildly shocking scenes. She frames the tale with a dual narrative telling it in break-away scenes of a modern pair of sisters reading the book in a dusty attic, the younger sister needling the older one with the more horrific aspects of the story. They are the Greek chorus that gets its own comeuppance. The film is most reminiscent of Rossellini’s historical dramas. Mannered and proper of dialogue but never insipid and with truly haunting moments. But the telling set-up is early in the film. Marie-Catherine is riding home in a carriage with her older sister Anne (Daphné Baiwir). They sit on opposite sides of the carriage. Even in their grief there is no closeness. Through a small window you see the back of the coachmen, slightly higher than the girls; he converses with his back to them. You come to find that the sisters are more close than you know, but again all of Breillat’s themes are there. The gulf between the sexes and between siblings themselves. Knowledge comes from on high and is patriarchal and judiciously divvied out. Acceptance of this is yours to choose along with any consequences and throughout the film this taffy pull of identity versus whatever status quo is in place is played out.
Bluebeard may seem a touch slight, given Breillat’s previous work, but maybe it’s a cleansing of the palette. She’s been said to be working on a version of Sleeping Beauty. She bucks expectations with this one, perhaps being more true to a classic fairy tale than we’d like her to be. Consider this when watching the end of the film. On one hand abrupt, but more like how those stories conveniently ended than maybe we remember. Consider too the lesson usually imparted in those tales. Accept and be safe little one. Breillat never plays it safe. – [DVD]
Fantasy
Unrated
DVD Release Date: 6/22/10
[...] Bluebeard (2009) – Based on Charles Perrault’s grisly fairytale, Bluebeard tells the story of young Marie Catherine, child bride to an aristocratic ogre with a reputation for murdering his wives. Directed by Catherine Breillat. (France) – [imdb] – Click here to read our review! [...]