Les Nouvelles aventures de Cendrillon (2017)
Directed by Lionel Steketee

Film Review

After Arthur Benzaquen's Les Nouvelles aventures d'Aladin topped the French box office league in 2015 with a wacking audience of 4.4 million, it was inevitable that other modern re-interpretations of popular classic fairytales would follow in its wake.  Two years later, Cinderella was to suffer the same fate, and you can hear Charles Perrault turning in his grave as this comedy atrocity plays in front of your eyes, the cinematic equivalent of an exceedingly nasty motorway pile-up.  Screenwriter Daive Cohen may have worked box office magic on his Aladdin makeover, but he failed spectacularly to pull the same trick off a second time with Les Nouvelles Aventures de Cendrillon. 

In his solo directorial outing, Lionel Steketee falls way short of  the success of the previous two features he directed with Fabrice Éboué - Case départ (2011) and Le Crocodile du Botswanga (2014), although with such an abysmal script he could hardly have done otherwise.  Totally wasted in the principal role is a surprisingly delectable Marilou Berry, an actress who is far better suited to more serious work like Agnès Jaoui's Comme une image (2004) and Pascal Thomas's Valentin Valentin (2014) than shoddy commercial comedies like this. Josiane Balasko is equally ill-used as Cinderella's wicked stepmother and Didier Bourdon merely adds yet another disastrous comedy to his increasingly dismal filmography.

As the narrative flitters haphazardly between present day reality and a childish fantasy, all the cast are called upon to do is to service some heavy-handed gags that are far more likely to extract groans than laughs from the film's badly patronised audience.  Ill-conceived and scripted with scarcely a scintilla of intelligence, Les Nouvelles Aventures de Cendrillon proves to be more of an endurance test for diehard masochists than a piece of mainstream entertainment.

Film Synopsis

If only dreams came true...  Julie's heart does a quick double somersault when Marco, the man she has secretly been in love with for years, rings her up unexpectedly - on her birthday!  Alas, there is no declaration of love, no promise of eternal felicity...  All that Marco wants is for Julie to look after his infant son for a few hours after his babysitter let him down.  Once again Julie has allowed her hopes to be raised up into the heavens, only to see them come crashing to ground in an ungainly spectacle of tear-sodden disappointment.  It seems that even her beloved Marco considers her as nothing more than a servant, someone to be taken advantage of whenever the need arises!

It's not as if Marco's precious son has any endearing qualities.  He is just about the most loathsome and repellent brat to have ever drawn breath.  Still, always willing to do somebody a good turn, Julie takes the irritating child under her wing and amuses both him and herself by telling a fairytale, which somehow weaves together the story of Cinderella and her own woeful life experiences. As she does so, Julie comes to realise that Marco may not be the Prince Charming she has mistaken him for...