I’d bet that workaholic Catherine Breillat didn’t take much “vaca” time off between The Last Mistress and her lastest film. This would explain why I was unaware of Bluebeard‘s existence up until it was announced for Berlin back in February. Its current “second life” on the Fall festival circuit has perhaps sparked renewed interest – Strand Releasing who are notorious for announcing deals after the fact, have made the acquisition just in time for its NYFF premiere. Strand plans a spring 2010 release. Hopefully the news will please the filmmaker, who had some recent production woes.
Once again frolicking in an other century, this looks at how fairy tales often have main characters who are sort of serial killers of children: in other words, ogres. But Bluebeard is its symbolic figure. In the 1950s, it was also the favorite tale of good little girls. One of whom is Catherine, who loves to frighten her older sister Marie-Anne, by reading this fairy tale to her until she starts to cry. But Catherine also puts herself in the fairy tale by becoming Princess Marie-Catherine, Bluebeard’s last wife, the one who escapes the fate of all those he hung before her. Because she is the virgin princess that the ogre cannot make up his mind to kill. This hesitation will doom him. So the virgin gets the head of the giant.