Bluebeard (Barbe Bleue)

With an austere setting and simple editing resources, Catherine Breillat develops a simple but loving version of Charles Perrault’s classic. One of the sisters, Catherine, likes scaring the other one, Marie-Anne, with fairy-tales, and insists on reading Bluebeard. The tale from the late seventeenth century starts unfolding on the screen. Other two sisters have fallen from financial grace. After meditating on it, the youngest agrees to marry the wealthy Bluebeard, as disgusting as he is, unaware still of the whereabouts of his seven previous wives. When he goes out on a trip, she only has to respect the prohibition of entering the mysterious room in the castle. But the curiosity of the sisters gives way to the expected horror. Breillat succeeds in representing the harsh, bloody finale, maintaining the tone of freshness and youthful dreaminess of the young Parisian girls from the 50s.