Saturday February 16, 2008
Start time 3pm
Modern Fuel (21A Queen Street)
In conjunction with its Current Exhibit of the same name, Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre presents "Donkey Skin"(1970), a musical directed by Jacques Demy. The Cinematheque Ontario describes it as "one of Demy's most opulent films." The following is a description from the Cinematheque's programme, which is screening a restored print of the film on February 23 in Toronto: Deneuve returns to Demy's cinema in a double role as both the queen and her daughter in this spectacular mounting of a seventeenth-century fairy tale. As always with Demy, the charm, lightness, and confectionary of his concept belies a dark undertone of irony and lament. Michel Legrand's music is often plaintive, and Demy underlines the unsettling aspects of the fairy tale, in which the queen, on her deathbed, insists that her husband can remarry, but only if the woman is more beautiful than she. His search leads him to conclude that only one woman, his daughter (Deneuve again), is as beautiful. She stalls the marriage by making increasingly extravagant requests and is finally whisked away disguised in the eponymous donkey skin. A dream cast, including Delphine Seyrig as the “lilac fairy” and Jean Marais as the king, surrounds the delectable Deneuve, and Demy tosses in startling anachronisms (a helicopter, books by “poets of the future”) before supplying a classic happy ending full of joy, song, and magic. “A dazzler, an entrancingly beautiful film done with charm, delicacy, taste and high imagination” (International Herald Tribune). Please come to Modern Fuel for an afternoon of enchantment and delight.
Rated PG.
The film is presented in association with Cameo Cinema, a free public film screening series that celebrates the joy of watching movies.