Donkey Skin

Catherine Deneuve plays a princess who must flee when her father, the king, tries to force her into a marriage. With the help of her fairy godmother, she disguises herself beneath the skin of a magical donkey. Met Peau d’Âne makes Jacques Demy van Charles Perraults's fairytale not a well-behaved children's fantasy, but a wondrous cocktail of magic, pop art, music, and alienation. The film moves between childlike wonder and adult darkness, with castles in saturated colors, dresses as unreal as the sun and the moon, and songs by Michel Legrand that stretch the dream logic even further. Demy’s greatest French box-office success remains one of his strangest and most beautiful films: a fairytale musical in which beauty always seems somewhat enigmatic, seductive, and dangerous.