Tag: Fairy Tales

La Belle et la Bête

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews4 Comments

In my ongoing quest for more fairy tales, I recently watched the French film, La Belle et la Bête.  This is another one for Once Upon a Time‘s Quest on Screen.  The movie was…odd.  I’ve heard this one touted so much as a landmark film in the realm of fairy tale retellings, but sadly, I just wasn’t impressed.  I’d actually seen it years ago, in a mythology class in high school.  I was hoping that I was wrong back then–because I disliked it the first time through.  I liked it better this time, but I’m still not really a fan.

The movie is based on the story by Jean-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, as all Beauty and the Beast retellings seem to be.  Beauty’s father is a wealthy merchant who loses all of his money, forcing his family to live in poverty in the country.  This particular version involved poverty that still featured footmen and a big house, but they were supposedly fallen from greater means.  Beauty has two sisters who are greedy and horrible, while Beauty is kind and sweet and devoted to her father.  This movie does get points from me for including Beauty’s brother (the original had three brothers), the only version I’ve seen do that–and the brother was my favorite character.  Beauty’s father gets lost in the woods one dark night, and is sheltered at a magical castle.  When he makes the fatal error in the morning of picking a rose from the garden, a terrible Beast appears, and demands that the merchant send one of his daughters to live with the Beast.  Beauty, of course, volunteers, to save her father’s life.  And so it goes from there…

The movie was made in 1946, but felt more like it was from the era of The Thief of Bagdad than Casablanca.  I had trouble with the acting, especially Beauty.  She had the big limpid eyes of the silent film stars (which was fine) and she did a lot of strange head tilts and hands waving about (which was not).  There are a few scenes of her walking around the Beast’s castle, and nobody actually walks like that.  On the plus side, like the silent films, I was impressed by…I don’t know whether to call them sets or special effects.  Everything in the Beast’s castle is alive–the statues, the arms holding candelabras, and so on.  Those were well-done, and often achieved a very good, slightly creepy effect.  I also very much liked the music, which I think did a lot to set the tone.

The Beast I found hard to take seriously when he first steps out in the garden.  He’s, well, furry.  He’s just really obviously a man in a Beast-suit.  Which he would have to be, it’s live-action, but…he’s not that ominous when he’s just standing there.  However, he actually was creepy at later moments.  The camera pans in and he kind of looms and it’s much more effective.  He also seems to lose control at times; from a plot standpoint this wasn’t very good because I’m still not clear exactly what happened, but a couple times he wanders around the corridors looking lost and dishevelled with magical smoke coming off of him and blood on his clothes.  In a strange way, he’s much scarier when he seems scared and confused.

I never got very attached to the characters, though.  I don’t think the problem was that it was in French, with subtitles.  There are long stretches without dialogue at all, so I don’t think the language mattered that much.  It was more the style of acting and storytelling that got me.  I mentioned Beauty seemed to be coming from the silent film school of acting, and the Beast and her father also seemed somehow distant.  All three of them felt like fairy tale characters–more archetypes than people.  That’s why I liked her brother best–Ludovic is the only one who seemed liked a real person.  He’s something of a scoundrel but I think good at heart, and the only one with any sign of a sense of humor.

There’s a subplot here involving Ludovic’s friend Avenant, who is also a suitor for Beauty.  When the Beast turns into a Prince (sorry if that was a spoiler…) he turns out to be the same actor as Avenant.  I’m sure this was intended to say something symbolic, but it still felt disconcerting, especially because Beauty noticed it.  She comments that he looks like her brother’s friend, and I feel like that fractures some version of the fourth wall, or something.  A more serious issue (and more of a spoiler so I’m trying to dance around it)…let’s just say something is happening to Avenant at the same moment the Beast is turning into a man, and while they’re related events, I feel like it distracts from what should be the pivotal moment of the story.

So all in all, I’m glad I saw La Belle et la Bête, but it’s never going to be a favorite, and I don’t quite understand the excitement over it.  After we watched it in my class, I went home and watched Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.  The French film may be a landmark in cinematography and certainly is much closer to the original…but I enjoy Disney more, especially the characters.

I did very much like the opening of La Belle et la Bête, a written message from the director.  Translated, it reads in part: “Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us…They believe in a thousand simple things. I ask of you a little of this childlike simplicity, and to bring us luck let me speak four truly magic words, childhood’s Open Sesame: Once upon a time…”

Fairy Tale Round-up: Sleeping Beauty

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews9 Comments

A look at another classic fairy tale this week: Sleeping Beauty.  Like Cinderella, it shows up in the Brothers Grimm and in Charles Perrault.  Grimm gives us a very brief story, “Little Briar Rose,” about a princess who is cursed at her christening, pricks her finger when she turns fifteen, and falls into an enchanted sleep for a hundred years, guarded by a hedge of thorns, until awoken by a prince.  Perrault gives essentially the same story in “The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods” with more detail, and an entire second act involving the prince’s evil ogre mother.  That part doesn’t seem to have filtered out quite so much!  But I have seen quite a few retellings of the first part of the story…

Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley is my favorite retelling.  McKinley’s princess, Rosie, has a life and a personality entirely separate from her curse.  She is defiantly herself in the face of all her christening gifts, and she deeply loves her adoptive family of fairies, who are hiding her from the curse.  I love the way McKinley plays with the elements of the fairy tale to make characters and a story that, in some ways, feel completely original.  I’m not wild about the romance, but it’s a wonderful book despite that.

The Princess Series by Jim C. Hines features Sleeping Beauty as a major character.  His Sleeping Beauty, Talia, comes from a darker version of the story, from before the Brothers Grimm.  She does have fairy-given gifts, like grace and balance, which she uses to become a skilled warrior.  She joins up with Snow White and Cinderella, and together they’re a force to be reckoned with!  The third book in the series, Red Hood’s Revenge, while partially about Little Red Riding Hood, also delves much more into Talia’s past, and a new interpretation on the Sleeping Beauty story.

Sleeping Helena by Erzebot Yellowboy is an odd story about a family of sisters who enchant and then raise their niece, Helena.  The oddness comes in part from the fact that the aunts are all around 105 (and feel it) and partially from Helena’s own wild nature.  She’s fascinating, almost a slave to her christening gifts.  Some interesting concepts in this one, but also…well, odd.

The Wide-Awake Princess by E. D. Baker tells the story from Sleeping Beauty’s sister’s point of view.  Annie nullifies magic around her, so she’s unaffected when the rest of the castle falls asleep.  She goes questing through other fairy tales, looking for a prince to wake up her sister.  I LOVE the concept…but found the characters rather shallow and simple.  Probably a good one for younger readers, but don’t expect anything too deep.

The Healer’s Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson is a very loose retelling.  Rose is the healer’s apprentice of the title, trying to decide if she really wants to be a healer, while torn between the two handsome sons of the local baron.  The Sleeping Beauty part comes in because there’s an evil magician stalking the older son’s betrothed with a curse.  The princess has been hidden away…and it’s pretty obvious right from the beginning who she’ll turn out to be.  It’s a good story in its own right, even if the Sleeping Beauty elements are more of a hint than a major focus.

The Sleeping Beauty by Mercedes Lackey, on the other hand, tosses around Sleeping Beauty elements with abandon.  This is a mash-up of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, in a novel that’s very willing to poke at the original fairy tales and have fun with the conventions.  It’s book five of Lackey’s 500 Kingdoms series, but I somehow contrived to read it first and it didn’t seem to matter.

Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is one of my favorite classic Disney cartoons.  I like the song, “Once Upon a Dream,” and I like Prince Phillip.  I think it’s because he argues with his horse; it gives him a smidge more personality than most early Disney princes.  Although–in a very bizarre turn, Phillip doesn’t have a single line of dialogue after Rose falls asleep.  He’s in scenes, and people talk to him, but he doesn’t have a single line.  I really have to wonder about the decision process there…  But anyway, rather like Disney’s Cinderella (which is all about the mice) this one is also really about the “supporting” characters–the fairies.  They’re quite funny, and also a big inspiration for my own fairy tale world in my writing.  Watch one of their scenes some time: they are shooting sparkles out of their wands all the time.  Not just when they cast spells, but constantly.  Those women really ought to be awash in glitter…

I’m betting there are other versions of Sleeping Beauty I haven’t covered.  What are your favorites?

Twelve Princesses, Plus One

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews2 Comments

What if the twelve dancing princesses had another sister?  That’s the premise of The Thirteenth Princess by Diane Zahler, retelling the fairy tale of the twelve dancing princesses from the point of view of their youngest sister, Zita.

This story starts out by tackling the question of why the king and queen opted to have quite so many children.  The king desperately wanted a son (as kings usually do, in medieval-type kingdoms), but instead, daughter after daughter was born.  Finally, the queen died giving birth to the thirteenth princess, Zita.  The king blames her for the death of his wife, and the end of his hopes to have a son, and banishes her to live in the kitchens as a servant.  As she gets older, she finds ways to secretly spend time with her sisters, and when they became mysteriously ill (and their dancing slippers keep mysteriously wearing out), Zita and her friends have to investigate to save the princesses.

I have mixed feelings about this one.  It’s a cute story about a spunky girl, and it is nice to see a girl with close ties to the princesses rescue them, instead of a strange man coming in to save the day, as happens in the original. There’s some good description, especially about the damp, moldy castle–because when you think about it, a castle built over a lake probably would be moldy!

Somehow this just didn’t quite grab me, though.  I don’t think it’s only that I’ve read so many versions of the fairy tale.  There really are some issues here.  For one, while the essential concept of the youngest, semi-banished princess is interesting, it also felt contrived.  It’s hard to imagine a king actually doing this, or having his court go along without batting an eye.  The king has twelve daughters who live like, well, princesses, and one who’s banished to the kitchen.  It almost feels like a story about child neglect, with a parent who targets just one child, while a lot of good people watch this happening and don’t do anything–everyone in the castle knows what’s going on, and no one does anything.  I don’t think Zahler was trying to write social commentary, but the situation creates a strange undertone to the story.  Zita isn’t being abused, but she’s still in a dramatically different situation than her sisters, while right alongside them.  It is, at the very least, incredibly socially awkward, to an extent that I don’t feel like Zahler really dealt with.

Zita’s separation from her sisters and status as a servant are essential to the plot, but I wish Zahler had found a different way to set that up.  Create a question about her parentage (though that could be dicey in a Juvenile book), or say that her identity had to be hidden, or something…

The focus on Zita’s story also means that we spend less time on the twelve older princesses.  I’ve already seen authors with longer, more-focused books stumble over dealing with a cast of twelve princesses.  They’re often under-developed as characters, but this book is one of the worst for that.  Arguably, they were never meant to be developed, since the book is about Zita, but it’s about Zita’s relationship with her sisters, and the major conflict of the plot is how to save them…so for the book to work, we have to care about them.  Other than in a vague, general way, I don’t.  They’re perfectly nice girls, but I don’t care about them as individuals.

Zahler doesn’t help matters by giving all the princesses A names–Aurelia and Alanna and…I can’t remember any of the others.  I’m on shaky ground criticizing that decision, since when I wrote a retelling, I gave my princesses A names too (but mine all have nicknames and are rarely called by their identical-sounding A names).  The only princess who’s developed at all is Aurelia, the oldest.  The others occasionally get a comment in the narration to say that one likes to read or another is the prettiest or whatever, but none of that really goes anywhere.  I only remember there was one named Alanna because of Tamora Pierce, and I don’t remember anything about that particular princess anyway.

On the other hand, Zita is a pretty good character, marked by strong loyalty to her sisters, and she’s in an interesting place trying to figure out her role and her relationship to her family.  I don’t feel like that was explored quite as much as I’d like, but there was at least some good character development there.  Her friends are Breckin the stable boy and Babette, a witch they meet out in the woods.  They’re both reasonably good characters, if somewhat straight-forward in their friendship for Zita and their desire to help the princesses.

I think that might be the key to my reservations about this book.  There are themes and characters that could have been more complex, and weren’t.  What IS there is good, fun, interesting…but the book feels like it could have been more.  I’m sure there are those who would tell me that this is a kids’ book, so how complex does it need to be…but I’ve ranted before about how deep kids’ books can be.  This book is set up to be about parental neglect, sibling rivalry, discrimination (against magic-doers), thwarted love, and class divisions…but most of that isn’t really dealt with.

It’s a fun little story, and if you want a light, quick read, it’s a good one.  But don’t expect it to be more, and if you only have time for one novel about the Twelve Dancing Princesses, there are others I’d recommend instead.

Author’s Site: http://www.dianezahler.com/

Other reviews:
The Bookwyrm’s Hoard
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Anyone else?

Fairy Tale Round-up: Rumpelstiltskin

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews4 Comments

Rumpelstiltskin has been gathering many fans in recent days, with his role in Once Upon a Time, so I thought I’d talk about that story this week.  The original fairy tale is in the Brothers Grimm, and like many fairy tales, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

The story is about a strange little man who spins straw into gold for a miller’s daughter, so that she can marry the king (who has shown himself to be a real catch by threatening to kill her if she doesn’t spin straw into gold).  The little man demands the girl’s first-born child in payment, but when he comes to collect he agrees to a second bargain, to relinquish his claim if the girl can guess his name.  Exactly why anyone is doing most of what they do in this story…well, that’s mostly a mystery.  And that makes it a good one for retellings.

In the Once Upon a Time TV show, Rumpelstiltskin has been one of the most fascinating and complex characters.  He spins straw into gold, but he also has other fantastic magical powers.  He appears as a kind of devil figure, who will grant your dearest wish…for a price.  A series of episodes have also delved into his past.  What we haven’t seen, actually, is a direct retelling of his original story!  Maybe next season.

Spinners by Donna Jo Napoli and Richard Tchen casts Rumpelstiltskin as an ordinary man who crippled himself at a spinning wheel, trying to win the girl he loves.  The girl instead marries the miller, and has a daughter who proves to be a master spinner.  And one day she catches the eye of the king…  I loved the way this novel explored the characters, giving them greater depth and motivations.  I really liked it…up until the end, and then I was disappointed.  I don’t want to give it all away, but I will say I was hoping for a happier ending than I ended up getting.

Straw Into Gold by Gary D. Schmidt is set ten years after the usual story of Rumpelstiltskin ended, but with a twist–the Queen didn’t guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name, and lost her child to him.  The protagonist is Tousle, who has been raised by a mysterious little man who spins.  Tousle may or may not be the missing prince.  I love the concept of this, but I think it would have been better if it had more clearly told the original Rumpelstiltskin story, before getting to the results.  There are a lot of complicated conspiracy things going on, and some of the characters make questionable choices which are supposed to be secretly good…but I didn’t know the characters well enough to quite believe that.

The Rumpelstiltskin Problem by Vivan Vande Velde casts Rumpelstiltskin as the villain–and the hero–and maybe he’s just an invention of the miller’s daughter.  Vivian Vande Velde looks at fairy tales the same way I do.  She asks why people are doing what they’re doing, and points out the parts that don’t even remotely add up, and wants to know what the logic of it all is.  This book has a wonderful introduction analyzing “Rumpelstiltskin,” and then she wrote six short stories taking the story in all different ways.  It’s a wonderful collection of similar-but-oh-so-different stories, and shows in a single volume how much you can do with a fairy tale.

When Princesses Take Over the Fairy Tale

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews6 Comments

I’ve read many (many) fairy tale retellings, but rarely have I come across fairy tale crossovers, mixing characters from more than one tale.  That’s exactly the premise of Jim C. Hines’ Princess Series, of which I just read the second one for the Once Upon a Time Challenge.  This also goes towards my Finishing the Series challenge (two more books in this series to go!)  Since I hate to start out by reviewing Book Two, I’ll just tell you a bit about both, and try for a minimum of spoilers for the first one.

The Princess series books (so far, at least) are about adventures after the traditional fairy tale ends.  The main character is Danielle, also known as Cinderella.  The first book, The Stepsister Scheme, opens with Danielle recently married to her handsome prince, Armand.  Her stepfamily, however, is not ready to accept defeat, as becomes clear when stepsister Charlotte attacks Danielle, and kidnaps Armand.  Fortunately, Danielle finds valuable allies ready to help her rescue her prince.  Her new mother-in-law, Queen Beatrice, likes to take princesses-in-need under her wing, and has a kind of secret service made up of Snow White, a powerful sorceress (she doesn’t like the term witch) and Talia (Sleeping Beauty), who has used her fairy-given gift of grace to become a skilled fighter.  Together, the princessess set off for the realm of fairies to rescue the prince.

Book Two, The Mermaid’s Madness, brings in another fairy tale–and this is definitely not Disney’s version.  In the original story, the little mermaid can’t marry her prince, and instead sacrifices herself to save him.  Hines’ mermaid killed her prince, and went mad as a consequence.  With Queen Beatrice mortally wounded and a war brewing between humans and merfolk, the princesses have to find a way to capture the mermaid, the only one with power to save the queen.

There’s so much to enjoy about these books.  I love the interpretation on the princesses.  Their abilities are grounded in the original fairy tales (Talia gets skills from her fairy gifts, Snow White’s magic revolves around mirrors), but reinterpreted to make the girls so much stronger and more powerful than they ever were in the originals.  I love the gender reversal of the first book–not only are these princesses not sitting around waiting to be rescued, they’re setting out to rescue the prince!  When I was around ten, I started writing a short story about a knight who was rescued by a girl.  The story never went very far, but I feel like it was motivated by some of the same impulses that make me love this series.

The girls are complex characters as well.  We get bits and pieces of backstory for them all, and it becomes clear that these girls didn’t live Disney movies, and maybe not even the Brothers Grimm stories.  Talia, at least, is coming from an even older and much darker version of Sleeping Beauty.  They have tragedies and they have complexities.  But there’s also humor in here too.  The relationship between the three girls is often a lot of fun, and it’s nice to see a story focusing on female friendship.

Much as I enjoy that, it also brings me to the one thing I don’t like as well.  I feel like Armand is under-developed as a character.  With Danielle as the lead (though occasionally Snow or Talia will narrate as well), I feel like her husband should have a bigger part!  He’s in it just enough for me to notice that he’s not in it enough, if that makes sense.  I love the focus on the girls, but I’d like a little more balance to give Armand and Danielle’s relationship some time too.

That’s a minor complaint about an excellent series, though.  If you like fairy tales and strong heroines, these are the books to read.  They’re from the grown-up section (is there a proper term for that?) and I’d probably classify them as appropriate for older YA, because of some of the darker themes.  I’d recommend starting with the first book, as a better way to get to know the characters, though the plots are independent.  I think I enjoyed the second one a bit more, but more because I was getting to know the characters better than because it was an inherently better book.  They’re both great!

Author’s Site: http://www.jimchines.com/

Other reviews:
Shiny Book Review
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Bookish
Yours?