A real Cinderella story, and it's a nice change

Originally published July 31, 1998

From the Grimm Brothers to Walt Disney to Pretty Woman, there are easily a thousand versions of Cinderella, but few are so invigorating, and so swoony, as Ever After.

Breathing fresh air into the musty saga of the charwoman rescued by the prince, this erudite enchantment (how many movies extensively quote from Sir Thomas More's Utopia?) tells the story behind the fairy tale.

This is no sanitized-for-your-protection Disneyland pageant; it is a realistic France, shot in the Dordogne at actual castles and abbeys, and populated with marauding bands of highwaymen.

Nor is this Cinderella a porcelain figurine; she is a resourceful orphan who blooms amid the dung heaped upon her by her stepmother. She rescues herself - and only then is she ready for mature love. Moreover, her prince isn't just a guy with a lot of gold and a chateau on the hill; he's an equally complex character trying to sort out his own role in the grand scheme.

The trouble with most Cinderella stories, Ever After gently chides, is that they were written by men. This is why a 19th-century Parisian grande dame (Jeanne Moreau) summons the Brothers Grimm to her salon to fill them in on her 16th-century ancestor Danielle (Drew Barrymore). A creature of grit and grace, Danielle, who in this movie's conceit was the real Cinderella, is so much earthier and more passionate than the Grimms' peasant princess, who by contrast seems confected from marzipan and a chocolate smear of grime.

Danielle isn't a peasant exactly, she's a farmer's daughter proud to be working the land, a young woman more likely to cultivate pumpkins in her garden than to ride one to the ball. Her mother is dead, and her beloved father remarries - a baroness (Anjelica Huston) with two daughters - just before dying in an accident.

In part, Ever After affords the pleasure of watching a bake-off between two American acting dynasties. Barrymore, spawn of thespian debauchees, and Huston, last in a line of actor-filmmaker-adventurers, are like a mighty duck and a proud swan battling for dominance of a very small but very real pond. (And while it's no surprise to hear Huston do an accent, Barrymore effortlessly carries off English tones in this movie where the French gentry seem to come from the Court of St. James's.)

But in larger part, Ever After's psychological and physical realism draw in the audience. Danielle's raw experiences of sibling rivalry and disenfranchisement in her own home are central to the script written by Susannah Grant (Pocahontas), director Andy Tennant and Rick Parks.

For Danielle (Barrymore deglamorized, with brown hair and no visible cosmetics), these are not exhausting burdens but psychological free weights that make her stronger and more resilient. Now that Barrymore has bequeathed the underaged-but-oversexed-babe roles to Christina Ricci, she has evolved into a formidable actress.

While Danielle's pretty stepsister, Marguerite, idealizes Prince Henry (Dougray Scott) because he is handsome and powerful, Danielle initially sees him more as Prince Chump. He is vain, Danielle thinks, and too shortsighted to use his power in a way that will ennoble him as well as his subjects. More like a Jane Austen hero than one out of the Brothers Grimm, Henry slowly evolves into Prince Charming, but it is his inner rather than outer attributes that Danielle admires.

Although this is a Cinderella for the most part without pumpkins and fairy godmothers, the character of Leonardo da Vinci (imported to the court of Henry's father, King Francis I) serves the latter function by sharing his inventiveness and vision with the young lovers. In a delightful performance, Patrick Godfrey plays Leonardo, who liberates Danielle from a padlocked dungeon by using some common sense.

Ever After offers enough adventure and swordplay to satisfy the most demanding action-movie fans (although be advised that Danielle might be a better duelist than the prince), and enough courtship of both the intellectual and sensual sorts to send romantics into raptures.

The sets and the costumes are perfection, everything of the period with the exception of a certain piece of fabled footwear that had me wondering: Did Leonardo invent Lucite before or after his flying machine?