
Damsel
“There are many tales of chivalry in which a brave knight rescues a lady in trouble. This is not one of them,” warns Millie Bobby Brown’s lush new fantasy film, so we know right from the start that there will be a damsel, she will be in distress, and she will have to save herself.
After a brief prologue, with knights battling a fire-breathing dragon, we see Elodie (Brown) chopping wood “centuries later in a faraway land.” She and her beloved younger sister Floria (a winsome Brooke Carter) live in an isolated snowy village that has fallen on hard times. They’re down to selling the drapes in their castle for food. But then a messenger arrives with a letter, sealed with royal wax. A queen is offering for Elodie to wed her son the prince with an attractive dowry that would restore prosperity to their people. Elodie demurs, but she’ll do whatever it takes to help out her folks. “I know you always wanted to see the world,” says her father (leonine Ray Winstone as Lord Bayford), trying to put a positive spin on things.
Elodie and Floria are dazzled by the warmth, bounty and opulence of the Queen’s abode and buoyed by their reception there. Prince Henry (Nick Robinson) seems just as charming as any fairytale prince oughta be. His mother (Robin Wright as Isabelle), however, is another story: regal but remote, coolly swatting away overtures of friendship from Elodie’s stepmother Lady Bayford (an underused Angela Bassett).
Despite Lady Bayford’s growing conviction that something ain’t right here, the wedding goes forward complete with all the pomp and circumstance deserving of a fancy schmancy fantasy royal wedding, Patrick Tatopoulos’ production design and Amanda Monk’s costumes are resplendent throughout. The wedding scene alone is something to behold. Pay attention to the moments when we see Elodie being helped into her breathtaking bridal gown, it ain’t your typical tomboy-to-beauty-makeover scene, and its meaning will become clear later.
Post-nuptials, there’s a peculiar ceremony near the mouth of a cave. Courtiers wear masks, ominously. Isabelle drags her dagger across the newlyweds’ palms and mingles their blood. And then, turns out. Elodie’s supposed to be sacrificed to the dragon living inside said cave part of an age-old arrangement that generally keeps the dragon from eating everybody in the kingdom.
So we go from “Cinderella” to “Die Hard” in a cave, as Elodie fights off once again an exquisitely well-designed dragon, with an exquisitely smokey menacing voice courtesy of Shohreh Aghdashloo. You remember that dress? Might as well have been designed by James Bond’s Q department McGuyvers it into survival gear here does our girl Elodie, employing what my Hollywood costume designer daughter informs me is a corset busk (the flat stiff board stuck down the bodice), which she scrapes against the cavern wall until it’s whittled down into a sharp point: dagger! She also uses some of the fabric for shielding, and tears off enough fabric to allow for freer movement on her part resulting in very attractive tatters throughout. Also Some resources are found by Elodie along with some dead bodies of other princesses who’ve been through this before; their names cover one whole wall here, written as they despaired of escaping. Bio-luminescent worms are discovered by her too; they’ll help light her way through.
This section of the film plays like a video game, with each obstacle that Elodie overcomes only leading to another, and another some progress is made but not quite enough.
For an extended period of time, Brown is alone, and she does fear and determination interchangeably well. There are a few jump scares after other characters show up in the cave too.
This should be on the big screen the settings are packed with evocative detail that helps patch some of the screenplay’s rough spots but even on a smaller one, it’s a fun, female-led twist on an old story (with a little sisterhood-is-powerful flavor at the end) that’s worth checking out.
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