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La Barbe Bleue (Blue Beard) (Bluebeard) (2008)

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Top Critics

Average Rating: 6.5/10
Reviews Counted: 36
Fresh: 28 | Rotten: 8

No consensus yet.

Average Rating: 5.9/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 2

No consensus yet.

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Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 546

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Movie Info

Controversial filmmaker Catherine Breillat puts a new spin on an ancient story in this multileveled drama. In France in the mid-'50s, Catherine (Marilou Lopes-Benites) enjoys toying with her older sister, Marie-Anne (Lola Giovannetti), by reading her the story of the murderous and oft-married Bluebeard, embellishing the story with plenty of gore and scaring the girl out of her wits. As Catherine rereads the story, we're taken back to the year 1697, as Lord Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) prepares

Unrated, 1 hr. 20 min.

Drama, Art House & International, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Directed By: Catherine Breillat

Written By: Catherine Breillat

In Theaters: Mar 26, 2010 Wide

On DVD: Jun 22, 2010

Strand Releasing

A simple device, the parallel structure freshens and enlarges the familiar story precisely because Breillat doesn't put too much weight on it.

May 13, 2010 Full Review Source: Boston Globe

| Comment

Mark Feeney

Boston Globe

Top Critic

Those looking for a re-interpretation of a classic fairytale will certainly find it in Bluebeard. They just won't find a very good one.

April 30, 2010 Full Review Source: Detroit News

| Comment

Tom Long

Detroit News

Top Critic

A movie that has all the when-will-he-draw-the-scimitar suspense of Friday the 13th as made by Robert Bresson. In other words, none at all.

March 31, 2010 Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly

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Owen Gleiberman

Entertainment Weekly

Top Critic

All fairy tales have morals and the one in Ms. Breillat's Bluebeard is brutal, suitably bloody and, like all good retellings, both similar to and different from earlier iterations.

March 26, 2010 Comment

Manohla Dargis

New York Times

Top Critic

Bluebeard revisits themes often found in Breillat's films -- sibling rivalry, pedophilia, gender conflict -- but it remains fresh and new.

March 26, 2010 Full Review Source: New York Post

| Comment

V.A. Musetto

New York Post

Top Critic

Psychologically rich, unobtrusively minimalist, at once admirably straightforward and slyly comic.

March 24, 2010 Full Review Source: Village Voice

| Comment

J. Hoberman

Village Voice

Top Critic

Breillat's ideas owes much to Angela Carter, yet The Bloody Chamber author would surely be depressed by the lack of dynamism on display.

July 22, 2010 Full Review Source: This is London

| Comment

Charlotte O'Sullivan

This is London

Murky and cold, this retelling of the fairy tale has an effectively grim tone that cleverly plays with our expectations while examining some provocative themes. But it's not very engaging.

July 22, 2010 Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall

| Comment

Rich Cline

Shadows on the Wall

Catherine Breillat's move from arthouse provocations to ponderous period dramas continues with this austere, slyly experimental adaptation of Charles Perrault's grisly classic.

July 22, 2010 Full Review Source: Total Film

| Comment

Kate Stables

Total Film

It's a playful approach, but Breillat's flat visual style and the deliberately stiff and austere performances she gets from her actors make this more of a chore than it should be.

July 19, 2010 Full Review Source: Scotsman

| Comment

Alistair Harkness

Scotsman

Complex, comic and discomfiting. So, vintage Breillat...

July 16, 2010 Comment

Sophie Ivan

Little White Lies

Breillat's chamber-piece of oblique eroticism is beautifully designed and acted but rendered slightly unsatisfying by a pointless second level of narrative reality.

July 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Guardian [UK]

| Comment

Peter Bradshaw

Guardian [UK]

Taking itself too seriously is just the first of many grave offences committed by the wretched Bluebeard.

July 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Daily Mail [UK]

| Comment

James O'Brien

Daily Mail [UK]

It's a surreal little film with an intriguing Freudian subtext and a haunting blend of magic and gritty realism.

July 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Daily Mirror [UK]

| Comment

David Edwards

Daily Mirror [UK]

What's most surprising about this adaptation is how free of violence it is: rather than embrace its potential for serial-killer bloodlust, [Breillat] has produced a witty, graceful and unusually tender reading of the story.

July 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph

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Sukhdev Sandhu

Daily Telegraph

Catherine Breillat delivers a new spin on an old tale that doesn't underestimate the female spirit.

July 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine

| Comment

David Parkinson

Empire Magazine

The bare bones of the narrative are icily, elusively etched. All the better to let its underlying sexual politics ferment, and let the viewer's imagination begin rooting around the sub-conscious.

July 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Film4

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Sophie Ivan

Film4

Breillat has produced her funniest and most immediately pleasurable film to date.

July 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Time Out

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David Fear

Time Out

We end with a head on a platter. But the head is oddly bloodless, like the whole film.

July 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Financial Times

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Nigel Andrews

Financial Times

The disconcerting saga springs two particularly nasty surprises, even if the "modern" segment doesn't quite work.

July 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Radio Times

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David Parkinson

Radio Times

Breillat's simplistic, spare approach pays dividends, particularly harnessed to sympathetic playing from the two girls, particularly Creton.

July 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Sky Movies

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Tim Evans

Sky Movies

Breillat directs the Bluebeard story line with a deliberate flatness, like a literal retelling, where all the actors appear stiff

July 11, 2010 Full Review Source: Film-Forward.com

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Kent Turner

Film-Forward.com

A moody fantasia of barely repressed compulsions and desire.

July 2, 2010 Full Review Source: Lessons of Darkness

| Comment

Nick Schager

Lessons of Darkness

Breillat directs it more like a rarefied period drama than a fantasy, stirred with poetic touches and offbeat humor and dark twists...

June 27, 2010 Full Review Source: Seanax.com

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Sean Axmaker

Seanax.com

A barebones DVD release of a predictably, spectacularly toothsome Catherine Breillat film.

June 16, 2010 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine

| Comment

Ed Gonzalez

Slant Magazine

More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for La Barbe Bleue (Blue Beard) (Bluebeard)

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An aristocrat with a blue beard marries young girls, who always wind up dead. There are a few startling images near the end that pop out because the rest of the story so flat, but the for the most part the matter-of-fact minimalist style fades the magic and mystery of the fairy tale.

September 9, 2010

Greg S

Super Reviewer

A strangely disjointed tale, based on the Bluebeard fairy tale, told as a cautionary tale that leaves the viewer feeling somehow short-changed. One questions the artistic decision to tell the tale as a young girl reading it to her older sister, and then dissolving to the action of the story. The scenery is sumptuous,

September 17, 2010

Mark Abell

Super Reviewer

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