In the film "Damsel," directed by David and Nathan Zellner, the traditional fairy tale ending is turned on its head. The movie follows the journey of a young pioneer named Samuel Alabaster as he sets out to rescue his beloved Penelope, who he believes has been kidnapped by a bandit. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Penelope is not in need of rescuing at all.
The ending of "Damsel" is described as an "inverted version of happily ever after," where the damsel in distress does not need saving and instead takes control of her own destiny. This subversion of traditional gender roles and expectations challenges viewers to reconsider their assumptions about love, heroism, and independence.
Elodie must rely on her wit and skills to survive rather than waiting for a knight in shining armor to save her. “She’s a damsel who doesn’t need to be saved,” the Stranger Things star told Netflix’s Tudum. “She saves herself in many ways. It subverts what you expect: You’re expecting the prince to turn around and save her, and… no. Don’t wait for the prince.”
Her family, led by father (Ray Winstone) and stepmother (Angela Bassett) are struggling and so are her people, in need of a miracle to save them. It magically arrives as an offer of marriage, a handsome prince from a far away kingdom (Nick Robinson) wants to make her his wife, steered by a strong-willed queen (Robin Wright). But her happy ending is in fact an unhappy beginning, the wedding part of an ancient ritual that sees her hurled into a cave, sacrificed to a dragon. Romance curdles into horror as Elodie must scramble back to safety.
It’s a tweenage riff on a classic left-for-dead revenge tale and in a subgenre that has been done to exhaustion, watching a young woman endure this same physically gruelling rise-to-action-hero status does feel at least superficially fresher (in comparison to another bride-finds-out-wedding-is-sacrifice thriller, it’s far more effective than 2019’s Ready or Not, a film far too pleased with itself to care if we’re as entertained).
“The concept of her triumphing over the dragon, and then in some ways of harnessing the dragon’s power and leaving the cave with that power, was baked into the story from the beginning. There was an earlier version where the dragon did not survive the story,” Mazeau said. “We felt, in sort of exploring and developing the story, that we all really became attached to the character of the dragon. It felt like, in some ways, they were both victims of this situation, and so it felt right for both of them to come out changed, both of them to survive.”
What does that mean for their bond? In a story loaded with themes of motherhood and women who become their own heroes, what does the dynamic shifted into after all that cat-and-mouse? Mazeau isn’t sure.
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