JACK ZIPES - SNOW QUEEN EXCERPTS

(Catherine) Breillat is also "guilty" of a commercial and pretentious outlook in her most recent remake, La belle endormie (2010), a pastiche of Perrault's "Sleeping Beauty" and Andersen's "Snow Queen." This film contains a dash of feminism, since Breillat tries to transform the tales of Perrault and Andersen into a coming-of-age story with a sleeping beauty who ingresses into predictable experiences and escapes them in the manner of Andersen's tale, and it includes a few erotic scenes in a film that ultimately leads to nowhere. It's a film that reduces feminism to commonplaces. But, nevertheless, we should take Breillat seriously as a feminist filmmaker.
In the photograph series My Doll (1996), (Meghan) Boody translates the setting of her provocative montages to the white, frozen Arctic, and alludes satirically to various Andersenian fairytales, in particular to "The Snow Queen." In these six photos, preadolescent girls appear in snowy landscapes, playing strange games or interacting with gigantic animals --a walrus, a mammoth, and also a mermaid--. The maidens have a melancholic look to them and seem to be indifferent to the icy waters and climate. They are out of place in a ruthless world.
(Both excerpts from The Irresistible Fairy Tale by Jack Zipes -back-translation from the Spanish-.)