Bluebeard

Tonight, I watched Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard.   (Some background info on the story.) About an hour into it, I texted a friend the following: "There haven't been any dead wives yet and there are only 18 minutes left!"

One minute later: "Oh. There they are."  ... With a child playing underneath them. Hmm.

Breillat's film definitely took a different direction from the 1972 brutal male killer version of Bluebeard.  (I still can't get over, "Two...he chandeliered." Ridiculous.)

To start, read this excerpt from a NY Times article on the film:

Terrifying stories like “Bluebeard” can function as a sort of exorcism for our fears, Ms. Breillat said, allowing us the luxury of frightening ourselves in the safety of our imaginations to emerge better able cope with the real horrors of living.
"The difference is that children are fascinated by fear because they are invincible,” she said. “They know it won’t happen to them. As adults we project ourselves onto those corpses in the basement."

Breillat's film spent an hour beautifully depicting a fairy tale. The slow paced scenes were staged with distinct, yet minimal beauty, creating a visual depiction of a folk tale: it was lacking in detail, with underdeveloped characters who stood as representations of culture, ideas, gender, etc.

The pace only changed when the film cut to the two sisters reading the story in the 1950s. Their speedy conversation and the younger sister's wit added a brisk pop-in-pop-out element to the steady tale. And while the anticipation grew for the climax in the Bluebeard tale, the carefree telling of the the bloody discovery by the younger sister (both visually and verbally), in the only moment where the two stories completely intertwined, created a perfect picture of what Breillat mentions in the NY Times' article-- childhood's invincibility.

The younger sister, jumping up and down, unbraiding her sister's hair, bragging about her smarts and blithely telling a brutal tale of murder, is quintessential invincible innocence. And it's this invincibility that Breillat destroys when she dispels her punishment for sibling rivalry in the final moments of the film.  In essence, Breillat is Bluebeard and the innocence she takes is not virginity but the reckless fascination of fear. 

Watch it.

Yes, it's rated R but just because it's French. There was nothing sexually revealing and the gore was quite minimal. To be honest, I would give it a PG-13 just for intense themes. But definitely not R.