“White As Snow”– Movie Review

During the opening weekend of The 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, I attended the International Premiere of the new French comedy, “White As Snow” (AKA, “Pure As Snow” or in the original French, “Blanche comme neige”), directed by Anne Fontaine, with Isabelle Huppert. 

Synopsis

After a young woman is kidnapped, she is rescued by strangers – but when the kidnapper learns of her whereabouts, her life becomes endangered.

Story

There is absolutely nothing extraordinary about Claire (Lou de Laâge) or the life that she leads.  She works for her stepmother Maud (Huppert) at a spa she owns and operates.  Maud is an exacting proprietor who is detail-oriented and insists on meeting or exceeding the expectations of her clientele.  Both Maud and her stepdaughter are extremely focused on operating the business.  Perhaps this is because Maud’s husband (Claire’s father) recently passed away and this is how they both deal with their respective loss.  But who can say?  Maud has always treated Claire more like an employee than a stepdaughter and this hasn’t changed.

One day while going out for a jog, Claire is abducted by some masked people who toss her in the trunk of their car and drive to a remote rural area far away from the city where Claire lives and works.  During the drive, the kidnappers have an accident; they swerve off the road and hit a tree, crashing the car and rendering Claire unconscious.  Later, she awakens in a farm house without a clue as to either how or when she got there.  It turns out that she was saved by a pair of twin brothers who found her wandering around a nearby the forest. 

What is behind the mystery of Claire’s kidnapping?  Maud – who is jealous of the effect the beautiful Claire has on other men.  When Maud learns Claire is alive and well, she hunts her down, determined to finish the job the kidnappers could not.  But when she finds Claire, Maud is stunned to learn her stepdaughter has transformed into a a carnal seductress who has many of the town’s men under her spell.  Infuriated, Maud becomes even more determined that Claire must go, so she enacts a plan to take out her stepdaughter.  But will Maud’s attempt to poison Claire succeed?

Review

In the years this blog service has been available, there have been reviews of movies that have attempted their own take on an adaptation of the classic story of Snow White (see here and here as examples).  Without a doubt, Fontaine’s “White As Snow” is the most clever and original that have been reviewed on this site.  Also, it is certainly the most entertaining not to mention the sexiest.  Make no mistake about it, this is an adult interpretation of the legendary fairy tale (the scene with the squirrels on the car’s windshield is priceless).   

It is always a treat to see Isabelle Huppert on screen – unsurprisingly, she is great in “White As Snow”.  But hers is not the performance that is most notable.  Instead, it is that of Lou de Laâge; her Claire shows immense range in her acting talents.  Claire starts as being reserved and conservative in both her behavior and lifestyle.  The turning point is her kidnapping where this young woman turns her life around; her metamorphosis is believable but also remarkable.  You are awestruck when you see her exploring her sexuality and becoming the life of the party.   

Following the screening, there was a question and answer session with director Anne Fontaine.  She did not originally plan to make a film based on “Snow White”; what she originally set out to do was to tell a story about a woman who was sexually emancipated and who meets men with whom she can share her sense of newly-found liberation without fear of punishment or judgment of any kind.  When she met with the co-writer of the screenplay to hash out the idea, it was the co-writer who observed that the concept bore some similarities to the legendary fairy tale; it was at that point they decided this was the best way to go.  Fontaine mentioned that many of the overhead shots used drones rigged with cameras due to the rugged mountainous terrain which made it too difficult to use typical equipment like cranes.