The World of Niche Comedy

Review: Donkey Skin (1970)

By Claire Lustig

There is no feasible way to prepare for watching a movie like Jaques Demy’s Donkey Skin. The fantastical satirical musical romantic comedy (yes this movie is a lot of things) is unabashedly absurd and weird. The story follows a princess, who later becomes known as the titular Donkey Skin, as she tries to escape her father’s incestuous desire for her (don’t worry, this movie DOES NOT promote incest). Other key characters are the vain fairy godmother of the princess with dubious intentions and a lovestruck prince who falls for Donkey Skin at first sight. Catherine Deneuve and Jaques Perrin have an easy chemistry, which makes sense considering that they also played love interests in another excellent Jaques Demy film, The Young Girls of Rochefort. They make what could have been a flat romance believable in only a couple of scenes together. Overall, every actor sells the absurdity of the story without giving away the integrity of their characters.

Donkey Skin does not hold back in any way, shape, or form. The story, which at it’s core is Cinderella plus incest is crazy, and the film plays into this instead of shying away from this. This film also has what a lot of modern films seem to be afraid of, color. This movie is overflowing with color in a way that I rarely see. The production design is gorgeous and features beautiful blues and deep reds. The costumes are unique to this film and don’t feel like they could be copied and pasted into another movie. (I will admit that the moon dress is ugly, but that’s part of its charm). Most importantly for a musical, the songs are really catchy. Even though I don’t speak French, this movie made me wish that I did just so I could sing along.

Admittedly, Donkey Skin isn’t for everyone. Most of the people in the club didn’t really care for it (with one member claiming that this movie would give them nightmares). But for me, this movie works in every way. It’s gorgeous to look at, it has excellent comedic performances, the songs are good (the only flaw of this movie is that there aren’t enough songs). And most importantly, I think that it’s hilarious. People that know me know that it is very hard to get me to laugh more than a couple of times when watching movies, especially comedies because I have higher expectations for those. But with Donkey Skin, I laugh at pretty much every joke, and since pretty much every moment of this movie is a joke so I pretty much laughed the whole time. It wasn’t good or even funny to some people, but I always have the best time watching it so I’ll always love this movie.