Written and directed by Jacques Demy
Jacques Demy’s Donkey Skin is a playful trumpet fanfare interspersed with a sarcastic trombone as Demy offers up a light-hearted musical and satire bound in fairytale wrappings.
It’s only fitting that Catherine Deneuve should star as a princess and the apple of a country’s eye. She’s bright, talented, kind, and beautiful, as well as adored by her two doting parents. Unfortunately, the queen takes ill, dying soon after, but not before telling her soon-to-be-widower husband that he must take a new wife, because the kingdom needs male heirs. After pondering it for a minute, and getting some bad advice from his royal council, the king becomes convinced the only woman to bear forth his legacy is his daughter…
Going into hiding to escape her incestuous fate, the princess wraps herself in a donkey’s smelly skin, and settles on the outskirts of a village in a neighboring kingdom. Here, Demy and co-writer Perrault try to convince you that Deneuve with some dirt on her face is horrid to look at, as the villagers scorn and mock her appearance. Eyesight is a rarity in Demy’s medieval fantasy land, clearly. With a little help from her fairy godmother – a bright spark of a performance by Delphine Seyrig – our princess catches the eye of a prince passing by. Is happiness ever after a possibility?
Donkey Skin is predictable, repetitive, and overall a rote story, but there’s a lot to take in and enjoy. Within the simple framework, Demy pours an excess of class satire that’s worth sticking around for, with ridiculous home decor, mad set decoration, and obscene costumes that’ll make a peacock blush. For example, everything in the king’s court is color-coded to delineate allegiance. A horse, all of the horse, is dyed in the king’s colors, and the same goes for the staff.
It’s wacky and outsized, and made more fun by the actors playing it straight, staying within the confines of the fairytale form. Hearts speak of longing, minds speak of troubling thoughts, and the idiosyncrasies of aristocracy are laid bare.
The happy ridicule is matched by the visual excess, which borders on the psychedelic at times, with heaped tables of food, dresses made heavy by their many ornaments, and the deluge of color that Demy floods his scenes with. Donkey Skin is a carnival, with all its pomp and play, a brightly colored rattle that’s inherently entertaining simply for the bright shape it cuts.
Adding to the splendor is Michel Legrand’s score and songs, which are playful as well. His catalog of songs offers swooning strings to carry lover’s sighs, coquettish 60s pop, and fanfare to match Demy’s sparkling merry-go-round story.
In its entirety, Donkey Skin is a triumph of product design and a visual treasure, and the fun Demy’s having is hard not to be won over by. Playing with techniques and style, and adding some impish little touches like a wild anachronism or provocative character traits (one woman can’t keep herself from spitting up live frogs), he puts together a seamless funride with no sharp corners.
Some movies retain their hold on you from how they made you feel, others by the lesson they try to impart. Donkey Skin does neither, but its execution of its aesthetic produces a near-endless supply of memorable frames. Some movies just look, sound, and feel good. Demy’s fairytale is one of them.
Mikkel Frederiksen 