The Girl Without Hands (2016)
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The Girl Without Hands Movie Review
The Girl Without Hands is a 2016 French fairy tale film directed by Sebastien Laudenbach. It’s a very strong, artistically accomplished picture.
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“I gave you my word, but I can’t cut off my daughter’s hands“
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The film is based on the eponymous Brothers Grimm fairy tale and this tale is exceedingly dark. It’s very dark and depressing for better and for worse. I appreciated its brutality, realism and darkness, but I still wanted at least a bit of light things from it. The film is highly artistic and more on that later, but it’s also very well crafted in terms of storytelling, though it has a couple of detriments here and there.
It’s mature, realistic and detailed. It’s also very engaging as it constantly holds your attention due to slow runtime, many plot points and new developments and a lot of very intriguing, progressively more memorable imagery. It’s a very intriguing story as a whole and I did get its feminist message where this woman, after losing her hands and having to flee from her house, is still capable to survive and take care of herself on her own.
However, the movie needed a more cinematic, more modern approach to telling its story as it ended up being overly retro and archaic in a way that it felt as if this fairy tale came to life, but not in a good way and by that I mean that it’s burdened with too many plot details and progressions and turns with a lack of good characterization to its characters or stronger emotion.
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So the characters are the weakest part of the film. The girl herself is a strong role model, but the prince is rather forgettable and almost unnecessary in the bigger scope of things. But I did find the devil to be a very memorable villainous presence. The voice acting is also very strong across the board and I did like the emphasis on visuals instead of dialogue, but that we still got enough dialogue to understand what’s going on in terms of storytelling.
The animation is by far the biggest reason to see The Girl Without Hands. It’s simply one very impressive, highly ambitious and artistic experiment that really paid off. Yes, this is experimental animation, but it worked as it stayed the same in its style throughout its runtime and it never fluctuated too much. So basically the style is that of a concept art or pictures in a book coming alive and that crudeness only further led to its charm and old-fashioned sense. I was particularly impressed with the movements which were fluid and sometimes emotion-explanatory while the imagery is frequently quite impressive with the pears, the trees, the devil and of course the water all providing highly memorable sequences.
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The pacing is also pretty good in the film and it’s continually involving to watch and never at all boring or slow as a lot happens in it and it’s all very interesting. The direction from Sebastien Laudenbach is also worthy of praise, especially having in mind that it’s his debut. The dialogue is strong as I’ve already stated above and I was particularly impressed by the movie’s sound design which was quite evocative. I just wished for more emotion to it and more depth in characters, but still it’s an impressive movie for the artistically inclined in particular.
The Girl Without Hands needed more depth and characterization, but it still features engaging storytelling, a lot of memorable plot points and imagery to it plus the sound design and direction are both very strong. The animation is its most impressive aspect as it’s fitting in approach to its fairy tale roots while being superb in its movements and highly artistic in style.
