Donkey Skin (film)

Jacques Demy’s 1970 film *Donkey Skin* (French: *Peau d’Âne*) is a surrealist fantasy musical romantic comedy. It adapts Charles Perrault’s 1695 fairy tale about a king who wants to marry his daughter. Catherine Deneuve, Jacques Perrin, and Jean Marais star, with a score by Michel Legrand. The movie was Demy’s biggest hit in France, selling 2,198,576 tickets, and it has since become a cult classic there.

In the story, a king promises his dying queen he will only remarry a woman as beautiful and virtuous as she. His advisers push him to find a new wife and produce an heir, so he decides the only way to keep his promise is to marry his own daughter. The princess, following her godmother the lilac fairy’s advice, asks for impossible gifts: dresses the color of the weather, the moon, and the sun, and finally the skin of a magic donkey that excretes jewels—the source of the kingdom’s wealth. The king delivers them all, so the princess flees, disguised in the donkey skin, to avoid the incestuous marriage.

She becomes a pig keeper in a neighboring kingdom. The prince there spots her in her hut and falls in love. He falls ill and asks her to bake him a cake. Inside, she places a ring. The prince finds it, knows she loves him back, and declares he will marry the woman whose finger fits the ring. All eligible women try it on, from highest to lowest rank. Last is Donkey Skin, who fits the ring and is revealed as the princess. At the wedding, the lilac fairy and the king arrive by helicopter and announce they too will marry.

The cast includes Catherine Deneuve as the Blue Queen and the Princess/Donkey Skin (sung by Anne Germain), Jean Marais as the Blue King, Jacques Perrin as the Prince (sung by Jacques Revaux), Micheline Presle as the Red Queen, Delphine Seyrig as the Lilac Fairy (sung by Christiane Legrand), Fernand Ledoux as the Red King, and others such as Henri Crémieux, Sacha Pitoëff, Pierre Repp, Jean Servais, and Rufus. Demy and Legrand also appear as voices.

Demy had been fascinated by Perrault’s tale since childhood and began working on the script in 1962. Catherine Deneuve’s involvement helped secure financing. The film nods to Jean Cocteau’s 1946 *Beauty and the Beast*: it casts Jean Marais, uses live actors as human statues in the castles, and employs simple effects like slow and reverse motion.