Queer Enchantments: Gender, Sexuality, and Class in the Fairy-Tale Cinema of Jacques Demy

Queer Enchantments: Gender, Sexuality, and Class in the Fairy-Tale Cinema of Jacques Demy. By Anne E. Duggan. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013.Pp. ix +195, acknowledgements, introduction, epilogue, notes, filmog- raphy, works cited, index. $29.95 paper.)Queer Enchantments: Gender, Sexuality, and Class in the Fairy-Tale Cinema of Jacques Demy is an engaging, interdisciplinary study of Jacques Demy's films and aesthetics that brings together scholarship in queer theory, film theory, fairytale studies, and fairy-tale film. Anne E. Duggan's intersectional approach to what she describes as Demy's "queer reimaginings of gender, sexuality, and class" (8) addresses two aspects of his work that Duggan believes have been overlooked: "the importance of the genre of the fairy tale, on the one hand, and the queer sensibility of his films, on the other" (1). Duggan frames this as a dialogue suggesting that fairy tales can tell us a lot about Demy's films and, in turn, much is revealed about the significance of fairy tales and fairy-tale film through his work. While Duggan is attentive to the ways in which Demy's own queer sexuality inscribes his work and has influenced many other queer filmmakers, "queer" is also defined here as an umbrella term to describe that which is seen as counter to normative constructions of gender, sexuality, and class and therefore potentially destabilizing. What Queer Enchantments does exceptionally well is reveal the ways that Demy's films disrupt and challenge the normalizing binaries inherent in many traditional tales "which uphold a heterosexist, bourgeois order in which capitalists, men, and heterosexuals are privileged over the working class, women, and queers" (7).The book includes detailed discussions of some of Demy's films including Lola, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Donkey Skin, The Pied Piper, and Lady Oscar. Duggan's analysis explores Demy's references to, and retellings of, fairy-tales such as "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Donkey Skin." She examines Demy's use of fairy-tale archetypes such as the maiden warrior, as well as the influence of film genres such as the Hollywood musical and Disney's fairy-tale films on Demy's work. Through a challenging and subverting of fairy-tale paradigms, Demy destabilizes and denaturalizes categories of gender and sexuality and interrogates social issues related to class.While the subject matter of Queer Enchantments is certainly fascinating, especially for readers new to Demy's films, it is Duggan's complex analytical framework that makes this book a vital contribution to fairy-tale scholarship particularly. For example, Chapter One explores the integration of motifs from versions of "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella" by Charles Perrault and Walt Disney in Demy's Lola (1961) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). These motifs are presented within the context of melodrama, where happy endings are never attained and loss and disillusionment are central tropes. …