In Anne Fontaine’s White As Snow, a beautiful young woman has her life upended by her evil, jealousy stepmother. If it sounds like the start of a familiar fairy tale, that’s the point but this is no story full of magic and fantasy, but an exploration of female sexuality and empowerment from a filmmaker who touched on those subjects in her previous film, Adore.
White As Snow stars the legendary Isabelle Huppert as Maud, the vile stepmother whose jealousy causes her to lash out at her stepdaughter, Claire (Lou de Laâge), who is sent far away to an unfamiliar village. There, Claire experiences as sexual awakening and uses her newfound powers to attract seven dwarfs…er, seven men.
The film was directed and co-written by Fontaine, whose previous films Adore and Coco Before Chanel were also told from the female perspective.
White as Snow opens in theaters on August 13th.
When Claire (Lou de Laâge), a beautiful but reserved young woman unwittingly provokes the furious jealousy of her evil stepmother Maud (Isabelle Huppert), life as she knows it is over. Sent far away from home, Claire awakens, both figuratively and literally, in a small village in the French mountains. As if by magic, her formerly shy demeanor is gone and she is suddenly aware of her feminine power. It’s the beginning of a radical emancipation. As Claire meets the locals and starts to take joy in her sexuality, soon one, two, three… seven men fall under her charm. For the first time in her life she allows herself to indulge in no-strings sex, taking pride in belonging to no one. But then Maud arrives wanting to reconnect, and Claire must decide who to trust—her sophisticated but cold stepmother, or the circle of adoring men that now surround her.
