La Belle et Bête
Yikes, the leads have 20 years of age gap, as they should, but it’s still leaves me yippy. Macron-levels of age gap are inherent yiffy.
The plot is well known in the Disney version, but this goes to the source. Eighteen century aristo dude with six kids, wife died in when giving birth to Belle, the youngest and meekest of virgins. The other two sisters are straight out of Cinderella. The three brothers follow similar templates: the young is good and valiant, the other two are Prodigal Son dandy drunkards.
After a shipment of treasure hits a storm and gets lost, our family turns immediately “poor” by aristo standards, which means living in the countryside in a large-ish house with plenty of land. Even finding one of the ships intact is worthless, the status has been lost, so mere merchants and bankers classify it as salvage and spit on their face.
Only Belle is happy with her bucolic life, all others wants to get back to the big city. When one of the sons gambles away their fortune and dad gets chased from the city as a petty thief, chased by some sans-cullote eighteen century chavs. He happens upon a dilapidated castle, with food, warmth, and chests with riches. Greedy as he is, he steals a rose for Belle and is greeted by the Beast, that requires payment of a soul for that rose.
Dad gets back home and tells this to the kids, and Belle being abnegated and seemingly hated by all, locks dad in the bedroom and bolts to give away her life.
She explores her golden cage, and finds it wanting of human warmth. She is sassy to her captor, but Stockholm syndrome kicks in. Belle discovers the backstory and bestial nature of her capture, but avoids kink shaming, S&M is a valid lifestyle. When both are more pliant, she trades a dance for a day with her family. The captor accedes, even though in the end of the dance, he comes at her brusquely, and she recoils.
Belle visits the family and discovers dad is a Sleeping Beauty, and wakes him with the magical healing water flask she carries around her neck at all times. The brothers horsejack her, and pawn off her ruby dress to pay off their debts, with promises of riches in the Beast’s abandoned castle.
The gang of street chavs gets there and ransacks the place, against the wishes of the witch that travels with them, which prefers the golden arrow she found stuck on a stone statue. As they run away with the loot, they are murderized by the giant marble statues that ARE ALIVE! Belle and the young brother get there too, with help from the forest god, but Belle herself if kidnapped by the lead chav.
She releases herself, but the Beast is struck with the golden arrow and begins to die. The witch and the lead chav run away, but can’t, and he doesn’t even help her. See The Mummy for the same dynamic. The brothers carry Beast to the healing water in the nick of time, and since they saved each other’s lives, Stockholm syndrome is complete, and they love each other. This means the spell is broken, and Beast reverts to human form, an older dude.
Around this there’s a framing device of Belle telling this very story to her kids, while living on the father’s house with her father and 20 years senior husband. Beast is a farmer now, even though as an aristo he only hunted and fucked appropriately aged poontang.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.