Customer Reviews

Donkey Skin

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I saw that movie many times when I was growing up in France. It is part of this special set of "comfort" movies that everybody who grew up in France has probably seen many times as well... these special movies would be shown on french TV at and around Christmas. If you are interested in better understanding the french culture, you must see it, independently of its artistic merit (even though it is pretty high, in my opinion). Moreover, Catherine Deneuve is the most beloved/respected person in France (and the coolest thing about her is that she is still human, flawed, aware of it, and eminently approachable). Ebert is right when he says that she is ageless. The baking scene is a classic and the turning point in the movie. By the way, other "comfort" movies include the 5-DVD boxed set of Angélique adventures, recently released by RusCiCo (every french boy was in love with Michèle Mercier), any comedy by Louis de Funès (the epitome of french comedy for the whole family), and so forth. These are fantastic movies to be truly enjoyed, so I failed to understand the criticism of some about the fact that this or that scene would not be "believable".

This is a 90-minute fairy tale, filmed in brilliant colors (lots of primary reds and blues) using famous Loire chateaux as backgrounds. Unlike Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, the entire screenplay is not sung -- this is a more conventional musical with songs and spoken dialogue. The subtitles are easy to read and accurate. The transfer to DVD is excellent. This is the sort of film one can watch more than once, if only to enjoy the rich visual detail.

Jacques Demy made musical films like no one else. I've waited for years to see this movie released on DVD and I can't believe it's finally out. Catherine Deneuve and Jacques Perrin make the perfect romantic couple and they play their roles with a sense of humor. Once again Michel Legrand provides a lovely score with witty lyrics by Demy.The film costars Delphine Seyrig (who was featured in several key French films such as Stolen Kisses and Last Year at Marienbad) and Jean Marais who starred in Beauty and Beast. This is the perfect film to watch after Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

I grew up in France with the story of "Peau d'Ane" as one of my favorite fairy tales. I would watch the movie on French TV every Christmas and over and over once we got a VCR. I adored it (without really understanding its mischeveous sense of humor and situations!). The songs, Catherine Deneuve in the sun dress, the blue and red horses, Jean Marais as the handsome father... Everything in this movie is so typically "Jacques Demy"... It's like a beautiful and weird dream! It's no Disney for sure!!
Even years later this movie still enchants me.
It's also a great movie to get kids used to subtitled movies.

You have to be able to give yourself to a movie without really understanding it, to appreciate the beautiful qualities of Jacques Demy's PEAU D'ANE. So much of the story doesn't make any sense to American viewers. Why, for example, does the Prince sham illness in order to get "Donkey Skin" to bake him a cake? He knows who she is, why doesn't he just go for it. Why go through the rigmarole of getting every woman in the kingdom to try on the ring? How does he know that only Catherine Deneuve would be able to wear the ring? What if he got someone else instead? (We see a cute reaction shot when a very young princess, maybe 4 or 5 years old, tries on the ring and it's way too big for her.)

Growing up in France, commercial TV played this movie every Christmas, just the way that here in the USA they were showing "It's a Wonderful Life." For us American children trapped in Paris at Christmastime, there was one great treat, a showing of "Peau D'Ane" every year to look forward to (this was in the days before DVDS and even VHS.) You'll see the special cake that Catherine Deneuve makes with her dirty twin, and you'll wonder why she makes such a flat cake for the prince--it's a visual reminder of our special Christmas cake, the "galette," round and flat, into which a shoe, a baby or other toy has been inserted. We would have a "buche de Noel" every year, always a cause for general applause. (The Princess slips a golden ring into the cake, and Prince Charming nearly chokes to death on it!) In many ways Demy puts in references to our charming French Christmas traditions. We would stay up late and have a midnight dinner the French servants called, the "Reveillon," an enormous feast with chickens, geese, sausage and sometimes quail. You'd think everyone would be fat, but even Santa Claus, or as we call him, Pere Noel, although dressed in red like Prince Charming (Jacques Perrin) in tbis film, is always portrayed as thin, nearly emaciated: compare him to the enormously fat jolly man American kids call "Santa Claus."

By the way, we put out shoes by the fireplace, whereas you American children hang up stockings at the mantelpiece! Then when we open our gifts, we settle in for the annual treat of seeing Jacques Demy's masterpiece, "Peau D'Ane." Now an adult, I can see that Delphine Seyrig and Micheline Presle were still quite attractive in 1970, though to a child they seem quite elderly compared to how young Deneuve looks. We had gotten used to seeing Deneuve and Jacques Perrin together in Demy's previous film, LES DEMOISELLES DU ROCHEFORT, but here they share even more charisma and sex appeal. Their number together doing backwards somersaults and then gliding down a placid river on a painted barge, torches burning bright in daylight, is one of the best in the film.

Catherine Deneuve's re-teaming with director Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand is not as charming or memorable as their previous musicals (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, their best, and The Young Girls of Rochefort), but Donkey Skin is still quite a magical and certainly unique cinematic experience.

With a plot motivated by incest (with both father and daughter clearly willing, at least in this film version) and obvious phallic symbolism (Prince Charming finds his bride by trying a ring on the fingers of all the women in the kingdom), Donkey Skin is a rather bizarre fairy tale. Demy also set out to create a magical, cinematic, fairy tale world, so the film requires that you set all expectations of realism aside, in terms of the visuals and the way in which the music is "integrated" into the narrative. However, a lot of the fun comes precisely from the film's anachronisms (a fairy godmother that looks like Jean Harlow and rides a helicopter) and its visual games (Deneuve's golden looks, the red and blue-colored horses and people).

Deneuve was impossibly beautiful at this point in her career, and she fits the part of the princess perfectly. Jean Marais, in a clear nod to Jean Cocteau's masterpiece 'Beauty and the Beast' (there are a couple more nods to Cocteau in the film), also makes an ideal king. In fact, the whole cast is great, especially the actress playing the fairy godmother. The film looks great on the DVD, which is loaded with extras. The best for me were the segment from the documentary 'The World of Jacques Demy' (in which Demy, Deneuve and other cast and crew members talk about making the film), and the charming interview with the film's producer (who was 87 at the time). The worst was a rather pompous discussion of the film by psychoanalyst, a literature professor, and a Jacques Demy scholar. That segment will be of interest to scholars, but I thought listening to their discussion took away from the charm of the film.

Be warned that Donkey Skin is an odd film, certainly not for everyone's taste. However, like Jacques Demy's other musicals with Catherine Deneuve, this is a truly distinctive piece of filmmaking and if you're willing and able to open your mind to a magical fairy tale world, then I think you'll enjoy it.

It's been over 25 some years since I first saw the movie so I only rated the movie as I see fit...
I read this book so many times when I was younger, really facinated with the fairytale story. When the movie came out in the 70s, boy was I excited and saw it twice too. I remember how beautiful Catherine Denueve and still is. The movie was very much like the book, colorful and very fairytale like.
Now I'm trying to get the vhs or dvd if there's one, but the price is hilarously way high... hope it will go down so I can buy it for my kids...

The trees in the forest being made of bodies explain everything... Unforgettable for someone who saw it in my age at the time...

This great fairy tale features the wonderfull Catherine Deneuve in the main role. I really liked the godmother that brings a little humor to this story. It is definetely a 5 star "non-animation" fairy tale, though we know that we don't have a lot of options in this category...

This isn't anywhere near the "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" but it was fun, fairy tale like.
After a king's wife has died, he goes on a hunt to marry a girl just as beautiful as his wife. After a long search he realizes, that it's been right in front of him all along. It's his daughter Catherine Denevue. Hearing the disturbing news, she runs away hiding in a donkey skin so she won't be identified. Of course she finds her charming prince who saves her.
The best scene in the movie is this surreal scene where Denevue is cooking. I don't want to give it away. But it's unnecessary and completely implausible. I loved it.