Beauty and the Beast

It seems as if big screen dueling cinematic fairy tales are the trend within the last few years at the box office. Back in 2012 movie audiences were bombarded by the Snow White avalanche when filmmaker Rupert Sanders’s Snow White and the Huntsman had the share the releasing spotlight with director Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror (although Singh’s whimsical narrative had the head start in hitting the movie theaters first by a mere two months). Now in skipping ahead four years later we seem to have a repeat performance with another classic tale involving youthful fairy tale femininity as the focus shifts to the “Beauty” from Jeanne-Marie Laprince’s Beauty and the Beast (or for the French-speaking movie-goers “Le Belle et Le Bete”). In 2016, co-writer/director Christophe Gans’s (“Brotherhood of the Wolf”, “Silent Hill”) Beauty and the Beast makes its lavish entrance into the movie mindset of viewers waiting to see what amounts to be another stagy screen adaptation of Laprince’s vintage and unconventional fairy tale romancer. Bill Condon’s musical film version of Beauty and the Beast will makes its entry a few months later in March 2017.

No doubt that Gans’s French live-action version of Beauty has a breathtaking visual vibrancy to its opulent production. Plus, it certainly does not hurt the polished product when the film features a couple of France’s big-time smooth cinema stars in leads Vincent Cassel and Lea Seydoux. In any event, Le Belle et La Bete/Beauty and the Beast was originally produced in 2014 so now it is making the rounds to the U.S. shores and elsewhere. As imaginative and sleek that Gans’s colorful showcase is in its elegant presentation the film fails to offer anything dramatically darker or delirious that dares to separate any distinction from past interpretations of this famously familiar story for the ages.

The sentiment has always been realized that if you are going to regurgitate epic fairy tales that have been done cou...

The French version of the famous fairy-tale.

I should have seen this before the latest Disney version of the tale. It came a couple of years ago, with a wonderful cast and visuals. French cinema is not a great vfx powerhouse. Unlike most of the famous Hollywood mythical and fairy tales originated from Europe, it's rare to see them converted to films in the similar fashion in its homeland. One of the reasons was the international market, to earn back everything they have spent for it, and more. When such projects do happen, sometimes the filmmakers tie up with Hollywood co-production to secure returns. Even if you take this film's worldwide box office, nothing overwhelming. But the challenge they had taken was truly appreciable.

That's not it, this is the most redesigned versions of them all I've seen so far. Because I haven't seen any other than Disney's, excluding the modern timeline adaptation like 'Beastly', 'I' et cetera. Yeah, even the Disney's live-action retained original from their animated version, but visually extraordinary. And in here, the story was same, thought told in a different way. The graphics too were very nice, I did not expect that. Despite it is being a fantasy and a children's tale, the contents were more serious. That reveals they were very keen to bring the adults to the screens than the kids. Yet nothing too seriously targeted the grownups like 'Tale of Tales'.

Everyone knows the basic storyline of this tale. A recently lost their fortune, a family of six siblings with their father relocates to a small farmhouse. No one other than the youngest daughter, Belle, was happy to be in such nature surrounded place. But one day when her father got into a big trouble, she takes his position and becomes a prisoner in an abandoned castle. Since then she begins to learn about the mystery man of the castle, particularly his past, reason to be ended like that. And following, a twist in the narration leading to the finale, everyone's fate wi...