Being that Millie Bobby Brown has, thus far, been known for her discernment when it comes to choosing roles in her still germinal career, Damsel has proven to be a noticeable disappointment in her filmography (not that her Godzilla forays are for everyone). Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (whose most major work is 28 Weeks Later, not even 28 Days Later), the problem isn’t as much in the flat style of the film, but its script, written by Dan Mazeau, who is known for directing more male-oriented movies like Wrath of the Titans and Fast X. In tapping Mazeau to write the script, perhaps Netflix was hoping to bring a dash of “laddishness” to the “strong” and “willful” character played by Brown, Elodie. In fact, all we really know about Elodie is that she is strong and willful…for a girl. That usual backhanded caveat that materializes when women can prove themselves to have the same qualities as men. Or rather, the same qualities that men are supposed to embody based on societal expectations.
Damsel is all about expectations, even if not really societal ones. Instead, the expectations are unique to the fictional milieu of Aurea. A place briefly shown (albeit in a cave) during the first few moments of the film when a king and his soldiers come face to face with a fire-breathing dragon that’s about to kill them all. Before we can find out if or how the king is spared, Fresnadillo cuts to the title card: “CENTURIES LATER…IN A FARAWAY LAND.” The viewer is then introduced to Elodie in a way that establishes what a “special” and “unusual” girl she is (in the same way as Belle from Beauty and the Beast—another role one could see Brown playing if Emma Watson hadn’t already done it for the live action version). Because—gasp!—she’s chopping wood. So hardcore! So self-sufficient! And she has to be, because she lives in a barren land where her people are starving. Not yet a queen, her father, Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone, more than slightly out of place in a movie like this), remains the rather incompetent king married to Elodie’s stepmother, Lady Bayford (Angela Bassett, who apparently needed a paycheck as well). This union between a white man and a Black woman goes unacknowledged in terms of being anything “unusual” for that epoch, as it seems to be the Netflix way to employ revisionist histories (à la Bridgerton).
What also goes unacknowledged as viewers watch the plot unfold is the idea that there isn’t really any need for all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the Aurean tradition of sacrificing a bride to the dragon that the Aurean king from the intro struck a deal with all those centuries ago. Mainly because, if the whole means of tricking the dragon into believing that the Aurean royals are sacrificing their own “daughters” as recompense for the three baby dragons the Aurean soldiers brutally murdered is as simple as slicing open any girl’s palm and slapping it with an Aurean royal’s sliced-open palm, then, honestly, why bother with a wedding? Or searching far and wide for a girl to fit the bill when, clearly, as viewers will see by the end of act two, when Elodie’s younger sister, Floria (Brooke Carter), is taken captive as a “replacement” for Elodie once she achieves the formerly impossible by escaping from the dragon’s lair, any human with a vagina can suffice. What’s more, the Aurean royals could have simply indoctrinated their “common people” with the rhetoric that being a sacrifice to the dragon was the ultimate “good deed” they could do for their king and queen. Problem solved…and any expenses on a wedding spared.
Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright, who has fallen far from the gritty grandeur of The Princess Bride in this outing), the “queen bee” of the royals who arranged these nuptials in the first place, is certainly not happy about the revelation regarding Elodie’s escape (sounding kind of like a Scooby-Doo villain when she says, “I knew that girl was going to be trouble!”). Thus, she leverages Floria as bait, knowing full well that someone as “brave” and “morally upstanding” as Elodie will be foolish enough to come back for her. Plucking her from the ship that her father and stepmother kept waiting after Lord Bayford developed a guilty conscience and tried to go back and rescue his daughter (to no avail), Floria is taken to the same cave. It is there that Elodie’s not so princely husband, Henry (Nick Robinson), reaches his breaking point (apparently, a girl being too childlike is enough for him to miraculously develop a conscience). And so, when he decides to refuse his mother’s demands to toss Floria in the hole, too, she snaps, “A prince protects his kingdom. Without hesitation or complaint. Give me your hand” (sounds like what “King” Charles might have said to Prince William before posting the doctored photo of Kate Middleton). Henry replies, “I cannot do this. She’s just a child.” Irritated by his flickers of humanity, Queen Isabelle spits back, “You’re weak” before then approaching Floria herself to perform the blood oath. With all the pretense cast aside in a moment of “desperation,” the viewer has it officially confirmed that this entire movie is built on an extremely flimsy pretext.
A pretext that doesn’t even lead to something all that worthwhile filmically, unless one enjoys watching Elodie wander blindly through a cave for the majority of the movie. And yes, there are pervs who might particularly enjoy it when she stands beneath a dripping portion of the “orifice” with her mouth agape, full-on blow job-style. Or perhaps one might find the dragon’s incessant gabbing (voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo) a source of “charming amusement” when all else fails.
Considering the casting of Robin Wright, it’s obvious the creators were hoping for some kind of “update” to 1987’s The Princess Bride—for it’s in that same realm of the fantastical, medieval genre (adventure fantasy, if you prefer). These types of movies being far more pervasive in the 1980s perhaps because things had become too modern for people. If there’s a resurgence of the genre now, then it’s likely for the same reason. Unfortunately, 1) they just don’t make such movies the way they used to and 2) in order to make this kind of movie in the present, the new requirement is that there needs to be a gimmick. In this case, the one about how Elodie is no damsel in distress, taking that word and its association and slaying it with as much vitriol as she does the dragon. Except, oh wait, the other twist/“modern update” to how one tells a medieval story is that she does not slay the dragon. Instead sparing it because it has its own empathetic backstory. And to drive home the point that women themselves have more empathy for others than men.
While “passable” for those who don’t know any better, one imagines that Brown and others working on the project hoped Damsel would offer some grand message about female independence (this heightened by the overt marketing ploy of releasing it on March 8th, International Women’s Day), and that any other actual plot holes (apart from just the hole Elodie is thrown into) could easily go ignored thanks to an aura of empowerment. Alas, not so much. And if you’re looking to watch a movie with the word “damsel” in its title, you might be better off trying Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress.
[…] Throughout the narrative, this is a running theme: the silencing of women who are trying to speak out against the unfair use of their own bodies. Which they are repeatedly told, through actions more than words, that they have no control over. Their bodies belong to “God,” de facto the conservatives running the Church. What’s more, they use that petrifying justification that all zealots are so fond of: “If it is not God’s will, then why doesn’t He stop it?” But Sister Cecilia is about to take so-called destiny into her own hands to prove to her oppressors that this Rosemary’s Baby life they’ve forced on her is not God’s will at all (leading her to a dark descent in the catacombs beneath the convent for scenes that, at times, remind one of Millie Bobby Brown pawing her way frantically through the dragon’s lair she’s been thrown into in Damsel). […]