If there has ever been a truly fairy tale adaptation put into film that is undoubtedly it. The insane production design work in this film with insane sets, magical locations, amazing dresses, and crazy make-up really immerse the audience member in a fantastic medieval reality where kings and queens, princes and princesses, peasants and servants, and even fairies exist.

Catherine Deneuve plays a princess who through the help of her fairy godmother (Delphine Seyrig) will escape getting married to his father the King (Jean Marais). Only with a magic wand, a chest with some prized possessions and dressed in a donkey skin covering her beauty, she will leave unto find her true love. Will she find it?

The trio formed by Jacques Demy, Michel Legrand and Catherine Deneuve succeed once more in telling a sweet love story, full of colour, and beautiful melodies. This time accompanied, as it already was in Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), by the fantastic photography of Ghislain Cloquet and the great performances of French cinema icons such as Jean Marais and Delphine Seyrig, and a still fairly young Jacques Perrin.

But, as already mentioned, even with performances as marvellous as the ones everyone delivers, not only by the main cast but also by various smaller scene-stealing characters (villagers, doctors, princesses and other royalty, cooks, tailors and other servants, and even a singing parrot or a frog-spitting old woman), and with a music and musical numbers as enchanting, simple and cute as the ones we have, it is the locations, sets, costumes and make-up which rises above any other aspect.

First, the fantastic use of real-life locations either those being woods, rivers or castles provide for a sense of veracity in the magic of the tale, as if you could also even find a talking rose one day while wandering through the wilderness. Those are accompanied by tremendous sets that amaze you, especially those presenting the various chambers of the castles decorated with its fancy thrones and beds, and even living sculptures.

The costume department deserves equal praise as not only for the obvious magnific dresses of Deneuve but for each and one of the characters in the movie, regardless of their importance in the plot or even if there just merely standing far in the back of a sequence, each one has its distinctive traits and particularities, enhancing once again this realism in the magic, as it makes believe for a distinct individuality for each person crossing the screen. That is coupled with a more admittedly surrealist and playful touch with the blue and red paint use for some lower-class servants and guards or even horses of the two main royal families in the tale.

In conclusion, this is the movie that you have to see if want to live the princesses and fairies experience, there is actually a bit of anachronistic elements sprinkled through the film specially with a bonkers ending (that being completely honest just makes it even better), but it is mostly a truthful and spot-on adaptation of a classic Cinderella-like tale that will charm any heart.