The life of Disney princesses is a single ordeal: the relatives by marriage are constantly trying to kill them. When they’re not vegetating in a coma, they get nasty neck pain from hanging their hair out of a tower window all day. Parents of Disney princesses have a depressingly short life expectancy and if the daughters’ situation weren’t dire enough, they would wait for the rest of their lives some royal guy who pulls himself together and frees her. Only kitschy songs save the princesses as opium through the dreary everyday life.
Sounds like it was made for a realistic examination of this pitiful way of life. The basic idea of the realistic fairy tale Scarlet looks something like this, a der best and most beautiful filmsrunning at the Cannes Festival this year.
Running in Cannes: Scarlet tells the story of a princess between the world wars
Director Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden) probably had no Disney films in mind when he tackled the film adaptation of a novel by Alexander Grin. However, both the book and the film tell a fairy tale, so they contain the same DNA as the cartoons from the Castle of the Mouse.
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Juliette Jouan
Newcomer Juliette Jouan plays Juliette, who is born in rural Normandy during World War I. She never gets to know her mother (there we are again!), her father Raphaël (Raphaël Thiéry) returns from the battlefields a broken man.
The father is made for a Disney animated film
The devastation of war hangs over Scarlet’s opening minutes. Contemporary shots of withdrawing troops merge into the image of a man trudging through idyllic nature. He was spat out by the war machine and is now returning to a normal life across misty meadows.
Raphaël is a taciturn man. He doesn’t talk about what happened, but we can still guess. Beefy in stature, he should actually tower over his opponent. But Raphaël ducks away from the world. If there were Actor Raphael Thiéry not if someone had already drawn him in a studio with oil on canvas. Or on a computer at Walt Disney Animation Studios.
With his deep-souled eyes, he looks at little Juliette, who he of all people has to raise in a world that just burns millions of lives. Fortunately, the former soldier turns out to be French Geppetto out of here. With his tired hands, he creates small marvels out of wood, the sale of which feeds the small family. If you look at his delicate toy airplanes, the thought of a war could hardly be further away.
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Raphael Thiéry
The life of the two has the makings of a nightmare. Money is tight, the other villagers treat her like lepers and call Juliette a witch. As if that weren’t enough, lurks in the distant big city much bigger villain: modernity with its electric toys that could make Raphaël’s talent obsolete.
Fantasy meets realism in the fairy tale Scarlet
But the unequal father-daughter team fights through. Juliette is not intimidated by the jealous and violent neighbors. Rather, it proves one thing impressive willpower, as if her path were predetermined by a prophecy. About the witch in the woods (Yolande Moreau), for example, who might just be a confused tramp, or about the ghost of her dead mother.
When a flying “prince” (Cannes permanent guest Louis Garrel) falls into the lap of curious Juliette, the Ingredients for a fantasy fairy tale completely. With one major difference from the standard Disney princess, Louis Garrel’s adventurer turns out to be a nice bonus for Juliette. She doesn’t need a liberator. Everyday life is already a magical adventure in Scarlet.
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scarlet
Pietro Marcello’s magic trick can be found in the Combination of realism and fantasy. He embeds the well-known elements of the fairy tale story in subtle observations of work, leisure and life. With the help of nature shots that would send Terrence Malick to seventh heaven, a magical mood is created in the film that also surrounds our father-daughter team.
The most emotional scenes in the film overflowing with sad beauty do not belong to the unofficial princess, but rather to her film father Raphaël. They belong to his concentrated gaze at work, especially his hands. Once upon a time they held guns. Now they carefully file and chisel the wood. They create instead of destroy, and that is a miracle in itself.