Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2019: #21. Pure As Snow (Blanche comme neige) – Anne Fontaine

Pure As Snow

Anne Fontaine re-teams with Isabelle Huppert for the third time in Pure As Snow, a modern, erotic comedy re-telling of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Snow White. Previously, the director/star worked on the 2011 comedy My Worst Nightmare and the 2017 LGBTQ drama Marvin, which saw Huppert playing an approximation of herself. Fontaine, who has kept a dizzying film schedule over the past decade, finds her project produced by Eric and Nicolas Altmayer’s Mandarin Cinema and Philippe Carcassonne’s Cine @. Alongside Huppert is Lou De Laage (of 2015’s The Wait) and also re-teams Huppert with her Nightmare co-star Benoît Poelvoorde, her Marvin co-star Vincent Macaigne, Jonathan Cohen, Damien Bonnard, Pablo Pauly, and Charles Berling (who worked with Huppert on Marvin, Elle, and The Comedy of Innocence). Behind the scenes crew includes costume designer Emmanuelle Youchnovski, cinematographer Yves Angelo and set designer Arnaud de Moleron. Fontaine competed in Venice for Dry Cleaning (1997) and in Locarno with How I Killed My Father (2001). Since then she’s had a wide variety of international productions, though she’s perhaps best known for 2009’s Audrey Tautou starrer Coco Before Chanel.

Gist: Fontaine appropriates the Brothers Grimm to tell the story of Claire (De Laage), who works at her late father’s hotel, which is now run by her vicious stepmother Maud (Huppert). When Maud’s young lover spurns her for Claire, she plots to rid herself of her stepdaughter, who finds shelter at a farmhouse with seven ‘princes.’

Release Date/Prediction: Filming took place in Spring of 2018 and reels of the film were shown at AFM. Huppert would be a better draw for a Berlin competition slot.