Penelope is a 2008 Fantasy / Romance movie starring Christina Ricci. The fact that I just saw it this month is not unusual for me. I am often multitasking and prefer movies that I have already seen so I can listen more than watch — but that’s a whole other blog post in itself. Even though it’s over ten years old, I’ll warn you that there are BIG spoilers in this post!
The movie is basically a fairy tale – a cursed princess who needs to be rescued by a prince. A witch cast a curse that caused Penelope to be born with a pig’s nose. The curse could only be reversed by marrying a man from upper-class society. Her mother keeps her hidden from the press and routinely sets up meetings with young suitors who, one after another, run away after they see Penelope.
Penelope tires of this and after meeting an especially intriguing man who also disappoints her, she runs away from home and finally experiences the outside world. However, this man has had an influence on her, and she goes to visit places he had told her about. I was sure that he would be the one to marry her and break the curse; I just didn’t know how it would happen. Even after the world at last sees a photo of her face, she becomes a celebrity, rather than a freak. So that’s the happy ending, right? No.
When her mother tries to force her into a marriage to break the curse (with a young man who is also being pushed into it for business reasons), Penelope declares, “I like myself the way I am.” This breaks the curse.
“Oh,” I thought, “that is very modern and proper: why shouldn’t she rescue herself?” But it was also unsatisfying.
Was it because it stood out as something modern and foreign to the typical fairytale / fantasy / romance storyline? Or was it missing something more basic? What is typical in screenplays is that at the crisis point, the main character chooses a new way of being that is the opposite of whatever internal flaw they have. This choice results from the struggle they have faced during the previous 80 – 100 minutes of the movie. Even if a man is “rescuing” them, a female main character still has to be the one to make a choice that changes her life. Everything after that is just the icing on the cake – reassurance that they will be happy from then on. (Obviously, I’m not including tragedies in this discussion.)
At the end, she meets up again with the one guy who really cared about her, and they get together for a happy ending. I’ll forgive a LOT for a happy ending, but I kept wondering why her saving herself bothered me.
Maybe it was simply too “on the nose” with the character stating the point of the movie with no metaphor. We wouldn’t normally be happy if a character announced, “Oh, I’m mean to people, and I should be nice.” I think Scrooge comes pretty close to that in A Christmas Carol, but even he dresses it up in flowery language. Or perhaps because Penelope’s solution was disconnected from the love interest, it caused her (and me, as the viewer) to miss out on the human connection – which is a very basic human need.