Cinderella (U)
three stars
Director: Kenneth Branagh
With: Lily James, Richard Madden, Helena Bonham Carter
Runtime: 113 minutes
ANYONE hoping for a radical retelling of the Cinderella story will not find it in Kenneth Branagh's live action version of Disney's 1950 classic, but that is part of the picture's charm. Not for the director of As You Like It and Love's Labour's Lost the transformation of fiction's greatest shoe fan into a kick-ass heroine who must bring her enemies to heel with a weapon and a glare. Instead, Branagh and his picture seduce with that much underrated and underused commodity in movies today - niceness.
The tale begins with the introduction of a girl called Ella who lives in "in the happiest of families", a situation which tends not to bode well for fairytale characters. Further proof of Ella's general loveliness lies in the fact she is played by Lily James, better known to date as the ditzy but good-hearted Lady Rose MacClare in television's Downton Abbey.
Given the tale of Cinderella has been around for quite a few centuries, it is hardly a spoiler to say that Ella's parents are not long for this world and she is left to live with an icy stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and two snarky step-sisters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera, another escapee from Downton. Wot, no room for Dame Maggie?)
The gentle Ella does not mind when step-mum and sisters turn her into an dish-washing, grate-cleaning drudge, instead believing that people are essentially good and that all will be well in the end. Her father once told her to "have courage and be kind" and she will stick to that philosophy if it bally well kills her, even if she does not quite express matters that way.
From there we canter on through a meeting with a prince (played by Scotland's Richard Madden), a ball, the hunt for a foot that will fit the glass slipper, and all the rest. For much of the picture Branagh, working from a screenplay by Chris Weitz (About a Boy) plays the story straight down the line. This may be something of a disappointment given the various recent and radical reinventions of the story - foremost among them the version in Into the Woods - and it lends the piece a rather plodding air, as if we must go through the motions come what may.
Matters perk up later, though, when Blanchett and Stellan Skarsgard, playing a grand duke and adviser to the king, introduce some elements of political intrigue into the story, but that is about it for tinkering with a tried and tested formula. Where the true razzle dazzle lies is in the fabulous costumes by the Oscar-winning Sandy Powell (The Young Victoria, Shakespeare in Love) and the production design by the equally Oscar-winning Dante Ferretti (The Aviator, Hugo). Together with Branagh they create a world that is lavish and oh so enticing.
Being live action, Branagh cannot rely, as the 1950 version did, on animated mice and bluebirds to send the cuteness count soaring. He has to make do with CGI renderings of talking mice which are, frankly, just not as adorable. The Fifties mice were creatures one would have liked to take home; the ones here are the stuff of pest control adverts. But using humans has its advantages too. Helena Bonham Carter, in full kooky mode as the fairy godmother who comes to the aid of the now Cinderella as she prepares to go to the ball, is an eccentric joy. Like the fairy godmother, Blanchett's wicked stepmother has attitude to burn and delights in vamping things up.
With Bonham Carter and Blanchett filling the grande dame roles, it is left to Madden and James to be sweet and light and funny, and they are, with strawberry sprinkles on top. Madden, complete with English accent rather than his homegrown one, even manages to be cheery while wearing circulation-stopping breeks. He and James exude a youth and innocence that chimes with the story as surely as the hands of the clock strike midnight, bringing to an end Cinderella's evening. As for Branagh, he and his cast have had a ball, and it shows.
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