Agrega una trama en tu idiomaAfter her parents are killed in a plane crash over the Grand Canyon, Melanie, a teenager girl and her younger brother and sister are sent to London to live with their uncle, Philip. There, s... Leer todoAfter her parents are killed in a plane crash over the Grand Canyon, Melanie, a teenager girl and her younger brother and sister are sent to London to live with their uncle, Philip. There, she meets his mute wife Margaret, who is mistreated by and terrified of her husband and onl... Leer todoAfter her parents are killed in a plane crash over the Grand Canyon, Melanie, a teenager girl and her younger brother and sister are sent to London to live with their uncle, Philip. There, she meets his mute wife Margaret, who is mistreated by and terrified of her husband and only converses through notes. She also meets Margaret's younger brothers Francie, a fiddler, ... Leer todo
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The movie itself has a great setting and great feeling as well. It is difficult to categorize and I would say it is a fantasy; yet it is not a very comfortable movie and has nudity and adult situations. At times the cruelty and sad situations almost make it a horror film. At the same time it doesn't necessarily feel like a horror film either.
The protagonist is a young girl around 16 who, because of the death of her parents, goes to her uncles home with her siblings. Her uncle is a toy-maker and a cruel man. The movie has some strange relationships and abuses going on. We notice all of this is happening while we are showered with fantastic, dreamy images and scenes including puppet shows, dances, animal costumes in gardens etc.
Caroline Milmoe who plays the main character is very lovely and does a great job. The different dresses she wears are kind of reminiscent of ballerina/ wedding dresses and add to the feel.
I very much recommend getting your hands on this movie if you are a fan of fantasy films or even horror movies like Argento's Suspiria or The Shining.
Angela Carter basically writes fairy tales for adolescents, but not really fairy tales in the present-day sense. Today "fairy tales" are associated with Disney and Pixar and other saccharine kiddie films. You could also consider comic-book movies and "Star Wars" reboots to be "fairy tales" for older children and teens, Hollywood rom-coms as "fairy tales" for adult women, and perhaps even porno movies could be thought of as "fairy tales" for male adults. All of these are alike in that they're ALL really escapist fantasy. But Carter's fairy tales mine the older, more literary fairy tale tradition of the Grimm Brother or Hans Christian Anderson and have a darker, more disturbing and much less escapist tone to them (and certainly more literary gravitas). But Carter also adds an element of more overt coming-of-age female sexuality. The fifteen-year-old heroine here (played by a twenty-something Caroline Milmoe) is first seen admiring her own full-frontal nakedness in a full-length mirror before trying on her mother's wedding dress. Later when her uncle tries to turn into a living puppet in one of his bizarre puppet shows, he--perhaps not coincidentally--has her play "Leda" a wood nymph who in Greek mythology who is raped by the god Zeus in the form of a swan. And there is an intimation (made much more clear in the book) that he actually wants his young brother-in-law to deflower his orphaned niece in order to degrade her.
Not that this movie is in any way graphic or that it ever entirely leaves the realm of fairy tale and metaphor. There have been plenty of "adult" fairy tale movies (ACTUAL porn adaptations of things like Cinderella or Snow White) over the years, but that is not anything that has ever interested Carter. Her work is probably closest to the tradition of "magical realism" that is popular in certain kinds of literature, but is very difficult to translate into cinema. But even so, she brings a more adolescent, more female perspective that is uniquely all her own.
The main problem with this movie is it simply can't compare with the book (and it is certainly less successful in that respect than "Company of Wolves"), but I still think it compares pretty well to most movies.
Caroline Milmoe was not underage when the film was made - she was 23 years old, playing a 15 year old. It is true that the nude scenes present a minor through a grown woman, and that is one of the central themes of the film - the sexual element itself is disturbingly grim.
The whole film has a unworldly sheen and inhabits magical realism long before it became fashionably known as such. Watch the camera track the parrot's gaze to get an idea of the sheer level of invention and ingenuity. And Milmoe really knows how to torment those braids...
This is one of the best films of the 1980's, and certainly the best film I have ever seen about childhood's end. I don't mind it being obscure because that lends it cult status, but I feel unhappy for the cast, particularly Caroline Milmoe, as this film is the top of their art and that deserves a wider audience.
Brilliant.
The Magic Toyshop has left an indelible impression in my brain. Yes, the story is bizarre, disturbing, perverse, and sexually discomfiting; but that is the nature of Angela Carter's artistry. Her's is a world in which mythology, fairy tale, and childhood innocence meld and clash with the sometimes magical, sometimes perversely ugly reality of adult consciousness. The Magic Toyshop encapsulates the violence inherent in the confrontation of the adults' and children's worlds into a succinct cinematic package. Scene upon surrealistic scene vividly and lushly convey the romantic dreaminess of childhood and the tight rigidity of contrived adulthood.
A few years after its brief visit to the Bay Area, The Magic Toyshop was in rotation on the Bravo arts cable channel. I managed to make a VHS recording of The Magic Toyshop. The quality is poor, but luckily this was recorded before Bravo had to fall to running commercials, so my copy of the movie has no breaks. I hope I still have my VHS copy, because it seems that, despite the death of Angela Carter and the continued interest in her literary work, the movie The Magic Toyshop may exist as ephemerally as the memory of a persons's first cherished toy.
¿Sabías que…?
- ErroresThe violin playing is unconvincingly mimed throughout.
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