Un jour mon prince (2017)
Directed by Flavia Coste

Film Review

Having cut her directing teeth with a series of shorts (including some award-winners), Flavia Coste makes her feature debut with this wacky re-interpretation of Charles Perrault's familiar fairytale Sleeping Beauty.  The release of Un jour mon prince is spectacularly ill-timed, as it hits French cinema screens just a week before another version of the same tale, Belle dormant.  Directed by Adolfo Arrietta and with a much starrier cast, this second film will most likely eclipse Coste's much more whimsical offering, which is a shame because it does have some charm and is the more amusing of the two films.  The film's strongest suit are its Canadian lead actresses, Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse and Mylène Saint-Sauveur, who are likeably gauche as the fairies coping with a severe case of culture shock when they visit Paris for the first time.  Un jour mon prince is kitsch, endearingly maladroit and fails to make the most of its potentially hilarious premise, but it is amusingly quaint and offers a welcome escape from the grimness and pessimism that seems to have enveloped the world over the past few months.  Naive as the film is, Coste shows some promise as a filmmaker and we should welcome her distinctive brand of comedy, one that is refreshingly chaste without being too sweetly saccharine.

Film Synopsis

The Queen of the fairies, Titania, is in a quandary.  Sleeping Beauty has been away in the Land of Nod for over a hundred years and still no handsome prince has come to revive her with a kiss.  Unless a prince shows up within the next five days the whole of the fairy kingdom will disappear!  For that reason, Titania has no choice but to send two of her most trustworthy fairies, Blondine and Mélusine, on a special mission.  Arriving in the city of lovers, Paris, they must find a suitable young man and return to wake Sleeping Beauty before the deadline elapses.  Blondine and Mélusine are two innocents who have no understanding of the ways of the world in the 21st century.  The fairies soon find a promising candidate, but then they discover, to their amazement, that he is not remotely interested in the opposite sex!  After several similar mishaps, the fairies finally find a suitable match, Guillaume.  Unfortunately, he is just the kind of boy they fancy...