Review: 'White as Snow' a Merry Modern Fairy Tale

How closely does director Anne Fontaine's film "White as Snow" parallel the Brothers Grimm fairy tale? Enough so that the brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, are credited, along with screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer, Fotaine herself, and "collaborator" Claire Barré, for the writing.

But how does a modern, more or less realistic version of the story stack up? There's neither magic at work, nor a prince on hand (though one rugged swain is deemed "charming" by the main character). How can a fable so reliant on spells and curses be translated to the real world?

With lots of winking, a tongue in the cheek, and a visual style that falls somewhere between Douglas Sirk and Pedro Almodovar. The spirit of Disney isn't far away, either.

Claire (Lou de Laâge) is the beautiful young stepdaughter of the vain and jealous Maude (Isabelle Huppert, turning the color red into her personal hallmark). The film loses no time in making it extremely clear how closely it means to hew to the traditional story: Red apples and a mirror figure into the first scene, and it's not long before Claire is attacked and abducted... not by a man, mind you, but rather a female killer for hire. (We later learn that assassination is just a side gig for her; by day she's a herbalist.)

It's not a huntsman, in other words, who's charged with making Claire disappear in the woods. But a hunstman does play a part, in the form of Pierre (Damien Bonnard), who, seeing Claire in distress, decides to intervene. This puts him in an awkward position: Pierre doesn't know who Claire is, or who she's pissed off, and he's already done time in jail. Still, he reluctantly allows Claire to stay at his house in the remote countryside, a house he shares with his twin brother, François (also Damien Bonnard) and a hypochondriac musician named Vincent (Vincent Macaigne).

Before long, everyone in the small nearby village knows that Calire is living with (and happily shagging) the twins, and just about everyone in the village – from the fuming, jealous veterinarian, Sam (Jonathan Cohen) to the unexpectedly kinky bookstore owner, Charles (Benoît Poelvoorde), to Charles' capoeira instructor son, Clément (Pablo Pauly), to Muriel, the lesbian owner of the cafe where Claire gets a job (Aurore Broutin) instantly falls in love with her. She's mysterious, she's gorgeous, she's in trouble... and she's had her libido switched on. She's as interested in the townsfolk as they are in her, and even if her friendship with the local priest, Père Guilbaud (Richard Fréchette) remains platonic, he can't help but quote some permissive-sounding Augustine at her.

Things are suddenly going well for Claire, whose emerging from a lifelong trance of meek obedience as though it had been a magically-induced coma. But then Maude shows up, and though she has no reason to be jealous any longer – after all, her lover Bernard (Charles Berling), whose fixation on Claire had triggered her murderous impulses, is nowhere nearby –�she's still devoured by insane rage. Cue the poisoned apple, among other plots, some of which career off-course in comedic fashion.

Will Claire survive her stepmother's predations? IF she does, will she settle on a single suitor? Does a bright, liberated women of the twenty-first century even need a prince to gallop in and save her? These are the questions Fontaine sets out to have fun with, and she knows they're the same questions the audience will be asking. Don't expect a Disney cartoon from this film, as cartoonishly as it's sometimes played, because this is not your maman's Snow White.

"White as Snow" opened in New York Aug. 13 and expands to more theaters on Aug. 20.