Critique: Damsel (Film)

Princess Elodie lives in a poor, cold northern land. Her father King Bayford agrees to her marrying Prince Henry of Aurea for a hefty sum of gold. Aurea is a paradise led by Queen Isabelle.

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Story

 

Whilst these aren’t noteworthy in themselves, they are necessary for understanding my critique points.

Queen Isabelle crosses a bridge into a mountain bridge with the newlyweds. They do a ritual that ceremonially gave Elodie the blood of the Aurean royalty. They cross back over the bridge, Prince Henry carrying Elodie, and I thought it would be funny if Henry through Elodie down the chasm. Then he does!

Elodie leaves her glowworm lantern in the crystal cave before she escapes the mountain. Elodie goes back on discovering Queen Isabelle took Floria as a replacement. So Elodie goes back through the journey to get the main cave in a montage sequence.

Elodie reveals to the Dragon that the Aurean royal family haven’t been sending their birth princesses as promised. So just like the Aurean ancestor king killed innocent dragon daughters, the Dragon has been killing innocent human daughters. (Many people in all societies have attributed (and still do) the crimes of a family member onto the whole lineage so this image of justice is believable.)

 

 

Good Points

 

There was much I liked.

            One thing in particular strikes me as great. Elodie rips some see-through gauze from her ruined dress and stuff glowworms inside to make a lantern. So clever.

The Dragon’s tail was long and flexible, allowing it to be used in original ways.

Aurea needs to sacrifice a princess every generation to the Dragon. They target poorer nations, exchanging gold for their daughter’s life. Realistic predatory behaviour.

A stream of fire comes out of tunnel, revealing it to actually be birds on fire. This was clever, playing with the audience’s expectations (there’s a dragon in the caves and there’s fire in the caves so any fire must be direct from the dragon’s throat).

The Dragon’s fire moves more like gushing lava rather than actual fire. This was a nice detail, plus it allows for the splash-back scene later.

Elodie teaming up with the Dragon to destroy Aurean royalty and then they went together back to Elodie’s home was a brilliant twist. Considering the Dragon tormented Elodie, could have eaten Floria and did kill Elodie’s father, Elodie putting that all aside was brave. It definitely fit with her character. The revenge on the Aurean royalty not so much, but it fits with the Dragon’s sense of justice.

 

 

Bad Points

 

Queen Isabelle of Aurea looks down at Elodie’s stepmother because she wasn’t born royal. Isabelle says we are what we are and shouldn’t rise above their station.

Yet Aurea does a ritual specifically to make non-Aurean princesses appear to be born of the Aurean line. A ritual they agree to do that makes someone something other than what they were born as.

It was a glaring contradiction that was entirely avoidable. (The queen could have dismissed the stepmother for multiple other reasons.”

 

After Elodie gets hit by the Dragon’s fire, she makes the conscious decision to be quiet.

The Dragon calls her clever for being quiet because it meant the Dragon didn’t know where she was. After this, Elodie started screaming at every little thing. Being frightened at a fall and binding her burn, fine, you can’t help but scream at those things. But Elodie screamed in frustration when stuck, screamed as she pulled herself along a tunnel, screamed whilst climbing a slippery slope…

It undoes the conscious decision she made to be inconspicuous. Why would the writers/director make the decision that Elodie is smart enough to be quiet if they were going to ruin it with her being not quiet?

 

When Elodie goes back to save Floria, there’s a montage of her retracing her journey to the main cave.

            Elodie makes another glowworm-gauze lantern. The thing is, all the gauzy material on her dress was ripped away ages ago. Without the material, how did she make the lantern. Maybe she found some in the tunnels/caves leading to the glowworms. This would have taken less than three seconds to show in the montage. As they didn’t, the second glowworm-gauze lantern is impossible.

            The first time around, Elodie could only get through the caves/passages (before the glowworms) with the pendant lantern. It was latticed so, when she burned material inside it, fore shone through. We didn’t see her relight it. We’ve seen how quickly the Dragon’s fire burns out so we know there isn’t any still burning. With all the twists and turns, and the fact she’d only been through those passages once before, there’s no way should could have made that journey blind.

 

There are two smaller points, though that doesn’t diminish their negativity.

When Elodie looks back up at the bridge, the circumference is surrounded by equal amounts and intensity of sunlight. However, the bridge is at the entrance of the cave, so one half (not being shaded) would have been brighter than the other. Yes, there were hundreds of candles in the cave entrance, but candles will always be dim and flickering compared to strong, stable sunlight.

Elodie made the Dragon’s fire splash back on her and that put the healthy dragon out for the count. Yet the already-injured Elodie, a human, could run on a burnt leg with a burnt body? Surely dragons would have more resistance to dragon fire than a human, especially when the human’s injured and the Dragon is not? So the Dragon being badly hurt by its own fire wasn’t feasible.

 

 

Issues with Visual Perspective

 

Visual perspective, proportionality, distance… it was a nightmare.

When the Dragon used its tail to battle the knights, it was very long and very thin. But in the sky earlier, it looked the exact same thickness as it did on the ground, even though things further away should look smaller. Also, the tail was shorter in relation to body size in the air than it was on the ground (proportional relationships don’t change just because of distance).

Landing in the chasm, Elodie looks back up at the bridge. The distance she fell didn’t match how far away the bridge looked. Yes, when someone falls it does seem to go on longer than it actually does. However, matching how much Elodie screamed during the fall objectively doesn’t match the distance to the bridge.

When Elodie climbs the crystal cave leading to sunlight, she falls and almost lands in the Dragon’s mouth. But there’s no way the Dragon could fit in those tunnels.

 

 

Poor Speechwriting

 

The scriptwriters did a poor job.

They used all the appropriate upper-class words and phrases. Yet they felt clunky and clumsy; were no doubt they were awkward to say. Most of the actors had movements and postures that indicated skill, and what are the chances that all the characters could physically act but not vocally act? Not impossible, but definitely near that point.

Queen Isabelle says, “The ritual is complete.” No one would ever declare it! If they were explaining the ritual, they would say when it started or finished, but not during the ritual itself.

When the ancestor king ordered the Dragon babies killed, he ordered his men with, “Kill the vile children.” That’s not a natural turn of phrase. Maybe ‘Kill the vile monster’s children’ or ‘Kill the vile monsters’, but ‘vile children’?

 

 

 

This film had plenty of clever stuff, particularly the glowworm-gauze lanterns. But there were so many issues that they couldn’t help but be noticed. However, it was still as easy film, perfect for sleepy afternoons or sick days. (Or just anyone with general brain fog.) The actors that played Elodie and her stepmother were both very talented, as was the voice acting for the Dragon. So the people involved definitely have much of which they can be proud.