Line #30 Film/Blancanieves


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blancanieves_2012_71740.jpeg]]
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3	''Blancanieves'' is a 2012 film from Spain directed by Pablo Berger.
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5	The title translates out to "Snow White", and, yes, it is a retelling of the story of Literature/SnowWhite, set in the 1920s. A champion bullfighter, Antonio Villalta, is gored in the ring. His heavily pregnant wife Carmen, watching from the stands, is so shocked that she goes into labor. Antonio is left a quadriplegic, while Carmen dies in childbirth.
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7	One of Antonio's nurses, Encarna (Creator/MaribelVerdu), schemes her way into marrying Antonio, who winds up essentially a prisoner in what was once his own home. Antonio and Carmen's daughter, also named Carmen, is sent off to live with her grandmother. When the grandmother dies Encarna grudgingly takes Carmen in and turns her into a scullery maid (this part is more like ''Cinderella''). Eventually, Encarna realizes that she does not need Antonio around to enjoy Antonio's money, and kills him via a StaircaseTumble. She sends her chauffeur/henchman off with Carmen with orders to kill her, but Carmen survives. She winds up taking refuge with a company of dwarves. Bullfighting dwarves. Bullfighting dwarves who call her "Blancanieves".
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9	''Blancanieves'' is a DeliberatelyMonochrome SilentMovie shot to deliberately mimic the look and feel of 1920s European silent film (hence the 1920s setting for the story.) Compare ''Film/TheArtist'', a 2011 film also shot as a silent movie that mimicked the look of 1920s Hollywood.
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12	!!Tropes:
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14	* AbortedArc: Don Carlos the scam artist tricks illiterate Carmen into signing a contract binding her to him for life. It has nothing to do with anything since Carmen is murdered soon after.
15	* AgeCut: Carmen, aged 12 or so, is hanging laundry to dry out in the meadow while also practicing her bullfighting moves. She passes behind a hanging sheet, and when she comes out from behind the sheet, she's a grown woman.
16	* AmbiguousSituation: A tear trickles from Carmen's eye after Rafita kisses her lips. She might be waking up like in the original story, but even that is up in the air.
17	* AsYouKnow: Antonio greets his wife in the bullfighting ring with the words "To you, and to the child we are expecting."
18	* BeastlyBloodsports: Bullfighting. As filmed in this movie it's mostly BloodlessCarnage.
19	* BondageIsBad: If being a murderer weren't enough to mark Encarna out as evil, Carmen sees her decked out in S&M gear (corset, whip, stiletto boots) riding her chauffeur like he was a pony.
20	* CallBack: Antonio's goring and all the tragedies that follow occur because a photographer snapped a photo of the charging bull and distracted Antonio for a fraction of a second. Later, when Encarta is trotting out her broken husband for the cameras, we see that same photographer, looking ashamed.
21	* DeadGuyOnDisplay: A deeply freaky version in which, after his death, Antonio is dressed up in his bullfighting costume and parked on a couch, so people can pose for photos with him. This is an actual practice known as post-mortem photography, in which people would prop up their recently deceased as if they were still alive prior to taking the photo as a memento.
22	* DeathByChildbirth: The older Carmen dies from childbirth a matter of hours after Antonio is gored.
23	* EasyAmnesia: The chauffeur drowns Carmen in the river but, apparently, breaks off a little too soon, as Carmen is revived by Rafita the dwarf. When she wakes up she has typical EasyAmnesia in which she can't remember anything that's happened to her or even her name.
24	* GainaxEnding: Not quite the fairy-tale ending. Don Carlos, the creepy circus impresario, is using Carmen's corpse for a gross sideshow attraction in which people can pay to kiss her dead body on the lips in hope of waking her up. Rafita, the handsome dwarf who loved her in life, is working on the sideshow attraction. After all the customers have gone, Rafita climbs into the glass coffin--apparently he sleeps next to Carmen's corpse--and kisses her lips. A tear trickles from Carmen's eye. Roll credits. What does it mean? Is Carmen waking up like in the story? Is she trapped in some sort of AndIMustScream coma? Is it merely symbolic? Who knows?
25	* GrayRainOfDepression: The both creepy and sad final scene where Carmen's dead body is being used for a circus attraction takes place on a night where it's pouring rain.
26	* IdiosyncraticWipe: There's an extreme closeup of Encarna's eye as she's posing for pictures. An iris appears in her...iris. The iris then expands to wipe to the next scene, showing Antonio and little Carmen together.
27	* ILoveTheDead: The disturbing final scene reveals that Rafita the dwarf, who works the creepy sideshow attraction with Carmen's corpse, sleeps in the coffin next to the corpse. And then he kisses Carmen's dead lips.
28	* IncrediblyLamePun: It's horribly cruel but also goofy when Encarna reveals to Carmen that her pet rooster Pepe is dinner, by asking her "Do you like PEPE-ry chicken?"
29	* JitterCam: Seen when little Carmen is chasing her pet rooster Pepe around the mansion.
30	* LaserGuidedKarma: Encarna manages to escape from the revenge-minded dwarves
31	* LittlePeopleAreSurreal: A troupe of six (hot seven, six) dwarves that travel around together, staging mock bullfights with calves instead of adult bulls. And just to make things a little weirder, one of the dwarves is a cross-dresser. (As for the number thing, for some reason the sign on the side of their wagon announces them as seven dwarves when there are only six. One dwarf is shown looking at the sign, counting to six on his fingers, and looking puzzled.)
32	* MatchCut: There's a cut from the full moon to the wafer Carmen takes at her first Communion.
33	* MaternalDeathBlameTheChild: Antonio turns away from baby Carmen when she's brought to him in the hospital. Of course, he's got a lot to deal with, what with being paralyzed on top of everything else. He repents later, when it's far too late.
34	* NeverLearnedToRead: Carmen admits she can't read and signs with an X the contract that Don Carlos hands to her. It's a pretty terrible contract binding Carmen to Don Carlos for life.
35	* PoliceAreUseless: We don't even see the police, but we can only wonder how Encarna pushes her husband down a flight of stairs and gets away with it (how could a quadriplegic wind up there?), or how she apparently got away with bashing her chauffeur upside the head with a statue and passing that off as drowning.
36	* {{Retraux}}: Shot in the old 4:3 aspect ratio, DeliberatelyMonochrome, and as a silent movie, with a 1920s setting to boot.
37	* SilenceIsGolden: A silent film.
38	* SkyFace: Carmen actually sees her father in the sky nodding encouragement before her final showdown with the bull. (Too bad he didn't tell her to not eat the apple.)
39	* StaircaseTumble: How Encarna eventually kills her husband, by sending him down a flight of stairs.
40	* StepServant: Carmen is raised by her loving grandmother after her father [[MaternalDeathBlameTheChild shunned her out of grief because her mother died at childbirth]]. After he becomes quadriplegic in a bullfighting accident, he marries his nurse Encarna, but the woman is revealed to be a sadistic monster. When Carmen has to live with them because her grandmother died, Encarna [[TraumaticHaircut crops her shoulder-length locks]], turns her into a slave and forbids her from seeing her father. When she discovers that the little girl is disobeying her, she has Carmen's rooster pet killed and served as dinner.
41	* TableSpace: Encarna invites Carmen to dinner for the first time, but the ominous mood is established immediately as Encarna and Carmen are on opposite ends of a long dinner table. The main course turns out to be Carmen's pet rooster.
42	* TemptingApple: Encarna tricks Carmen into eating a poisoned apple.
43	* TorosYFlamenco: Well, despite being a Spanish production this film has both Toros and Flamenco, as bullfighting is a major theme, while Carmen's mother was a flamenco dancer.
44	* TraumaticHaircut: Carmen's status as basically a slave in her former home is demonstrated when Encarna mercilessly hacks off her shoulder-length hair and leaves her with a close-cropped prison-style haircut.
45	* TravelMontage: A montage shows Carmen/"Blancanieves" fighting bulls while the troupe travels around a map of Spain.

Context Film / Blancanieves