Blancanieves

The third Snow White movie inside a year, Blancanieves differs itself from the comedy Mirror Mirror and the super serious Snow White and the Huntsman, opting for over the top melodrama and a style that harks back to the silent era.

It's 1920s Seville, and on the day famous matador Antonio Villalta (Giménez Cacho) is gored by a bull, his wife dies giving birth to a baby girl. Spotting an opportunity, his nurse Encarna (Verdú) wangles her way into a marriage with the now paraplegic bullfighter, while baby Carmencita grows up to be nothing more than a slave in her reclusive father's home. When efforts to keep dad and daughter apart fail, Encarna has her chauffer dispatch Carmencita (played first by Oria, then Garcia) into the woods but he bungles the 'job' and the girl is taken in by some kindly dwarves...

A round of applause for this re-imagining that, despite names and setting, sticks pretty close to the Grimm version of events. Writer-director Pablo Berger (Torremolinos 73) is obviously a fan of Michel Hazanvicius' The Artist (casting Maribel Verdú, a dead ringer for Bérénice Bejo, can't be a coincidence) and employs all the tropes of the silent era that Hazanvicious did. The music once again is a delight and Blancanieves proves yet again how little dialogue you need to tell a story. Mamet must be sweating.

The cast are pleasant, with young Sofia Oria standing out, but the film belongs to Verdú, who relishes playing the 'evil queen': setting dogs on defenceless rabbits and cooking Carmen's pet chicken and feeding it to her, she has a ball. We're not in the same territory of Sigourney Weaver's gothic take in 1997's A Tale Of Terror, but she's definitely a bad egg this one.

Blancanieves doesn't have the same charm as The Artist (nor the 'freshness' of the retro style) and it can drag in places but the story of Snow White works on a primal level, and it's fun guessing how Berger will adjust the elements of fairy tale - the dwarves, the poisoned apple, the prince - to suit his update.