Director Andy Tennant's application for membership in the Peter Pan Club. It purports to be the True Story of Cinderella, as told to the Brothers Grimm after publication of their own fanciful account, to "set the record straight." The teller (the imperious Jeanne Moreau) proclaims herself a direct descendant, with the legacy of a glass slipper to prove it, of the folkloric heroine, whose real name is revealed to have been Danielle. A Frenchwoman, mais oui, of the early 16th Century. The "biographical" approach to the story initially means some boring background information (how the subject came to have a stepmother and two stepsisters, how she lost her father), but it soon enough makes way for the imposition of modern attitudes and modern idioms in an opulent period setting ("Just breathe," the heroine reminds herself before her gossamer-winged entrance at the masked ball), to go along with the intractably modern actress, Drew Barrymore, and her corner-of-the-mouth manner of speech, her transient and dislocated lower-class British accent, her overall Baby Doll demeanor. The aged Leonardo da Vinci, lugging around the rolled-up canvas of his freshly painted Mona Lisa, is a major player in the events, but only because "Michelangelo was trapped under a ceiling in Rome" (more or less chronologically accurate); and his scientific acumen, taking the place of the Fairy Godmother's magic, comes in handy in freeing the heroine from a padlocked cellar on the night of the ball. The wicked stepmother (Anjelica Huston) is permitted some soft feelings for her second husband; and Prince Charming (Dougray Scott), Prince Henry to those closest to him, is saddled with some politically incorrect feelings as regards the servant classes (nothing that a well-read headstrong Renaissance feminist can't cure him of: and before the end, he is envisioning a new university with an open-admissions policy). None, however, of the historical, philosophical, or psychological padding disguises or changes, as it would or should, the stick-figure simplicity of the tale. It only strains the metaphor. (1998) — Duncan Shepherd