| Ever After: A Cinderella Story | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Andy Tennant |
| Produced by | Mireille Soria Tracey Trench |
| Written by | Charles Perrault (Cinderella) Susannah Grant (screenplay) Andy Tennant (screenplay) Rick Parks (screenplay) |
| Starring | Drew Barrymore Anjelica Huston Dougray Scott Megan Dodds Melanie Lynskey |
| Music by | George Fenton |
| Cinematography | Andrew Dunn |
| Editing by | Roger Bondelli |
| Studio | Flower Films |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | July 29, 1998 |
| Running time | 121 minutes (approx.) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$26 million (estimated)[1] |
| Box office | $98,005,666[1] |
Ever After: A Cinderella Story is a 1998 film inspired by the fairy tale Cinderella, directed by Andy Tennant and starring Drew Barrymore, Anjelica Huston and Dougray Scott. The screenplay is written by Tennant, Susannah Grant, and Rick Parks. The original music score is composed by George Fenton. The film's closing theme song "Put Your Arms Around Me" is performed by the rock band Texas.
The usual pantomime and comic/supernatural elements are removed and the story is instead treated as historical fiction, set in Renaissance-era France. It is often seen as a modern, post-feminism interpretation of the Cinderella myth.[2]
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In the early 19th century, the Grande Dame of France (Jeanne Moreau), an elderly aristocrat, summons the Grimm Brothers and proposes to tell them the real story of the little cinder girl. The lady claims that Cinderella was really a young woman named Danielle de Barbarac. She reveals a portrait of Danielle and a glass slipper, and proceeds to tell the story.
Danielle de Barbarac is a young girl who lives in a manor with her widowed father, Auguste, whom she adores. When Danielle is eight, her father marries the haughty Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent (Anjelica Huston), who has two daughters about Danielle's age. Soon after, Auguste dies. Rodmilla is envious of Danielle, and treats her like a servant after Auguste's death.
Ten years pass. The Baroness has fallen into debt. Marguerite, her spoiled older daughter, has grown to be cruel, arrogant, and bad-tempered; while the younger, Jacqueline, is kindhearted, soft-spoken, and constantly overlooked. In the orchard one day, Danielle encounters a man attempting to steal her father's old horse. She pelts him with apples, knocking him to the ground, and is horrified to learn that the man is Henry, the Crown Prince of France. Henry explains that his own horse was lamed in his attempt to escape stifling royal life. He forgives Danielle in exchange for her silence, and rewards her with money.
In the nearby woods, Henry rescues an old man's prized possession from a band of gypsies who stole it. The man turns out to be Leonardo da Vinci and the possession is the Mona Lisa. Henry's parents, the king and queen, have summoned Leonardo to the court. He and Henry become friends.
Danielle resolves to use the money to rescue Maurice, an old family servant whom Rodmilla had sold. While her step-family is out of the house, Danielle dons a noblewoman's dress and goes to court. She finds Maurice about to be shipped to the Americas, and demands his release. Prince Henry sees this and is impressed with Danielle's intellect, strength of character, and beauty. Danielle refuses to tell Henry her name, though eventually she leaves him with the name of her mother, Comtesse Nicole de Lancret.
Meanwhile, the Baroness schemes to match Marguerite with Henry, even as Henry is enthralled with the mysterious "Nicole." Henry and Danielle meet up several times and have passionate arguments about Utopia, class conventions, responsibility, and freedom. She challenges him to use his position for a greater good. At one point, they stumble on the gypsy camp, and after they are accosted, Danielle rescues Henry in an uproarious turn of events that wins them the gypsies' goodwill. Danielle and Henry share their first kiss by the gypsy campfire that night. However, Henry knows that unless he chooses a wife before the upcoming masquerade ball, his parents will marry him to a Spanish princess.
When Danielle's family receives their invitation to the ball, they lament their failing fortunes and lack of fancy clothes. The Baroness proposes that Marguerite should wear Danielle's mother's wedding dress and the matching glass slippers, which were stored away for Danielle's wedding. Danielle discovers them however, but when she retaliates against Marguerite for mocking her dead mother, she is punished with a severe whipping and having her treasured copy of Utopia burned. Through this, she gains a confidant in Jacqueline.
Danielle decides her idealized view of her relationship with Prince Henry is futile, and that she must break it off. She meets him again as they had planned, but her courage fails her as Henry misinterprets what she says and declares his love for her. Danielle, on the verge of tears, bids him farewell and flees.
Just before the ball, the Baroness discovers the interludes between Danielle and Henry, and her masquerade as the Comtesse de Lancret. The Baroness then informs the Queen that "Nicole" has gone to marry another, and the Queen in turn tells Henry. The Baroness also forbids Danielle from attending the ball.
On the day of the ball, the Baroness and Marguarite accuse Danielle of hiding the dress and slippers. After shouting that she would rather die than see Margurite wear her mother's gown, Danielle is locked in the larder. Her childhood friend Gustave asks for help from Leonardo, who frees her by unhinging the door. He also encourages her to go to the ball and tell Henry the whole truth, saying that the Prince's love for her will be enough to overcome convention. The servants give Danielle her mother's dress and slippers, which they had hidden from Marguerite, and Leonardo gives her a pair of wings.
Just as the King and Queen are about to announce Henry's engagement to the Spanish princess, Gabriella, Danielle arrives at the ball. Henry is overjoyed, but the Baroness rushes forward and tears off one of Danielle's wings, accusing her of plotting to entrap the Prince and revealing that she is a commoner. Danielle tries to explain but Henry is humiliated and refuses to listen, calling her an imposter. Devastated, she runs away, losing one of her slippers. Leonardo picks up the slipper, and reprimands Henry for abandoning Danielle, and the principles he claimed to espouse, when she risked everything for him.
Henry stubbornly refuses to consider the truth until he is about to be married. As the wedding begins, the Spanish princess sobs uncontrollably, imploring her parents to allow her to marry her commoner lover. Henry bursts out laughing, and the wedding is called off.
Henry rushes out of the church to find Danielle only to learn that she has been sold to a vile landowner, Pierre Le Pieu. He sets off to rescue her. At his castle, Le Pieu threatens Danielle, now a servant in shackles, with sexual advances. She turns the tables on him and threatens him at sword-point; in exchange for his life he frees her. She walks out of the castle just as Henry arrives. He begs for her forgiveness, telling her he's been looking for the woman who left behind the glass slipper the night of the ball. He asks her to marry him as he slips it on her foot, and she accepts.
The Baroness and her daughters are summoned to court, assuming that Henry plans to propose to Marguerite. Instead, Rodmilla and Marguerite are asked if they have ever lied to the Queen about Danielle's engagement. The Baroness makes feeble excuses, while Marguerite tries to save herself by blaming her mother. The ladies turn to Jacqueline for corroboration, but she stands up for herself and refuses to lie for them. The Queen strips the Baroness and Marguerite of their titles and tells them that they will be shipped to the New World colonies, unless someone pleads for them. Danielle steps forward and is introduced as Henry's wife. Danielle asks that Marguerite and the Baroness be sent to work in the royal laundry for the rest of their days as a fitting punishment. Jacqueline, who had always been kind to Danielle, is spared punishment. She marries the captain of the royal guard, whom she met at the ball.
The Grand Dame reveals to the Brothers Grimm that she is Danielle's great-great-granddaughter, and, as evidenced by the glass slipper and Da Vinci's portrait, not only did they live happily ever after, but the story is indeed true.
Ever After was filmed in Super 35 mm film format, however both the widescreen and pan-and-scan versions are included on the DVD. This is the only Super 35 mm film directed by Andy Tennant; his films before Ever After were filmed with spherical lenses, the films after were filmed with anamorphic lenses.
The castle shown in the film is the Château de Hautefort. Filming also occurred in Dordogne, France at the Châteaux de Fénélon, de Losse, de Lanquas, de Beynac and the city of Sarlat.
The painting of Danielle seen in the film is based on Leonardo's Female Head (La Scapigliata).
Ever After has received mostly positive reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 90% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 61 reviews, with an average score of 7.5/10.[3] The critical consensus is: Ever After is a sweet, frothy twist on the ancient fable, led by a solid turn from star [Drew] Barrymore.[3] Among Rotten Tomatoes' Cream of the Crop, which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television, and radio programs,[4] the film holds an overall approval rating of 76% based on 17 reviews.[5] Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a favorable score of 66 based on 22 reviews.[6]
Lisa Schwarzbaum from Entertainment Weekly gave the film an B-, saying: "Against many odds, Ever After comes up with a good one. This novel variation is still set in the once-upon-a-time 16th century. But it features an active, 1990s-style heroine -- she argues about economic theory and civil rights with her royal suitor -- rather than a passive, exploited hearth sweeper who warbles "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes"."[7] She also praised Anjelica Huston's performance as a cruel stepmother: "Huston does a lot of eye narrowing and eyebrow raising while toddling around in an extraordinary selection of extreme headgear, accompanied by her two less-than-self-actualized daughters -- the snooty, social-climbing, nasty Marguerite, and the dim, lumpy, secretly nice Jacqueline. "Nothing is final until you're dead", Mama instructs her girls at the dinner table, "and even then I'm sure God negotiates"."[7]
Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, while praising the film with 3 out of 4 stars, wrote that "The movie [...] is one of surprises, not least that the old tale still has life and passion in it. I went to the screening expecting some sort of soppy children's picture and found myself in a costume romance with some of the same energy and zest as The Mask of Zorro. And I was reminded again that Drew Barrymore can hold the screen and involve us in her characters. [...] Here, as the little cinder girl, she is able to at last put aside her bedraggled losers and flower as a fresh young beauty, and she brings poignancy and fire to the role."[8]
Both Newsweek and Rolling Stone magazine praised the movie's intelligence and wit, although some critics also noted its "confusing switch between humor and seriousness."
The film was released on DVD with minimal extras. It is currently unknown if there will be another DVD release with more substantial content. A BluRay Disc has also been released.
A musical version of the film is currently in the works, with the book and lyrics by Marcy Heisler and music by Zina Goldrich. The musical was scheduled to have its world premiere in April 2009 at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, but the pre-Broadway run has been postponed.[9]
The theatrical trailer was noted for its use of contemporary dance music with images of a classic fairy tale. The two pieces of music used in the trailer are "The Mummers' Dance" by Loreena McKennitt and "Fable" by Robert Miles.
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