Bluebeard

I just watched a recent French version of Bluebeard, directed by Catherine Breillat.

It is an awkward and strange telling of the fairytale. All the characters are remote and inaccessible. The scenes all have a muted, stilted, stagy feeling to them, but somehow this worked. Somehow it made everything seem mysteriously intimate and charged.

The story is told as a story-within-a-story, with two young sister in their attic reading the Bluebeard tale. I didn't really care for this at all, in spite of the fact that the two little girls were incredibly charming.

I was more interested in the Bluebeard part. I'm not really familiar with the story, so I'm not able to compare it to other versions. But what drew me in was the strained and clunky yet delicate and tender relationship between the big, sad, tormented, ugly Bluebeard, and his lithe and serious young bride. The quiet chemistry between them was very touching. Very enigmatic.

The gothic horror element wasn't really lurid and brutal; rather it was suffused with a sense of sorrowful inevitability.