The curse which has fallen upon the wealthy Wilhern family has now come to claim miserable Penelope; when she looks in the mirror she sees a pig´s snout staring back at her. However, no-one comes along with an offer of love so that she might be rid of her magic curse. This being a modern fairy tale, Penelope can’t be bothered to wait for a husband to come along, so she sets out into the world in order to learn to face her ill fortune.
One of Penelope’s distant ancestors once enraged a local witch and, in return, she laid a curse on the noble Wilhern family: their first female offspring would walk the earth with a pig’s snout. And there would be only one way to break the evil spell - a similarly high-born young man would have to fall in love with the girl and take her as his wife. Up to this point we recognise the popular fairytale motif - a prince turned into a frog or a princess in a donkey’s skin, who can only be freed by true love. Penelope’s family sets up ceremonial courtships, but the suitors always run away in terror, one of them even wants to scandalise Penelope by putting her in a magazine. And what about Penelope? Down but not out, she decides she is not going to wait around until she finds a groom but is going to leave and learn to live with her misfortune. “We call this the anti-Barbie movie. Today everyone’s so concerned with how they look, it’s interesting to develop a story where a young woman overcomes the prejudice and proves her strength of character and eventually triumphs, finds herself and finds true love,“ say the producers of the film.
101 min / Color, 35 mm
European premiere
Director Mark Palansky
/ Screenplay Leslie Caveny
/ Dir. of Photography Michel Amathieu
/ Music Joby Talbot
/ Editor Jon Gregory, Ian Seymour
/ Producer Reese Witherspoon, Scott Steindorff, Jennifer Simpson
/ Production Stone Village Pictures
/ Cast Christina Ricci, James McAvoy, Catherine O’Hara, Reese Witherspoon, Peter Dinklage
/ Contact Hyde Park International, Blue Sky Film Distribution, a.s.
/ Distributor Blue Sky Film Distribution, a.s.
Mark Palansky was born in Toronto but grew up in Los Angeles. He studied art and philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. Palansky works with sculpture, photography, and design, and added film to his creative talents at the end of the 1990s. In 1999 he made his first short film, Shutter, about a pregnant photographer whose life is saved by her own strange visions. He debuted as a feature-film director with the modern fairy tale about an ugly girl named Penelope, the important moral message of which he handles with humour, playfulness, and invention.
Hyde Park International
14958 Ventura Blvd, #100, CA 91403, Sherman Oaks
United States of America
Phone: +1 818 783 6060
Fax: +1 929 670 7175
E-mail: [email protected]
Blue Sky Film Distribution, a.s.
Sněmovní 9, 118 00, Praha 1
Czech Republic
Phone: +420 224 222 398
E-mail: [email protected]
Milan Dostál
Distributor, Service Company Rep.
Richard Signeski
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