(Akazukin, Tabi no Toch de Shitai to Deau)
Japan. 2023.
Crew
Director – Yuichi Fukuda, Screenplay – Yuichi Fukuda & Tetsuro Kamata, Based on the Manga Akazukin, Tabi no Tochuu de Shitai by Aito Aoyagi, Producers – Shinzo Matsuhashi & Daizo Suzuki, Photography – Tetsuya Kudo, Music – Nobuaki Nobusawa, Mayuka Sakai & Eishi Segawa, Art Direction – Tsutomu Takahashi. Production Company – Credeus/TV Asahi Productions.
Cast
Kanna Hashimoto (Little Red Riding Hood), Yuko Araki (Cinderella), Takanori (Prince Gilbert), Miki Maya (Isabella), Natsuna Watanabe (Anne), Yumi Wakatsuki (Margot), Midoriko Kimura (Barbara), Mirei Kiritani (Tekla), Tsuyoshi Muro (Paul), Masaki Haji (Mr Hans), Jiro Sato (King Bovell), Tomoharu Hasegawa (Lord Chamberlain)
Plot
Little Red Riding Hood is walking through the woods when she encounters the witch Barbara who insists on giving her a makeover. But Barbara hasn’t got the spell for the shoes right and instead gives Riding Hood a pair of muddy boots. As Riding Hood tries to clean the boots off, they wash away. Going to retrieve them, Little Red Riding Hood finds they have been taken by a girl who introduces herself as Cinderella. Cinderella is forced to work as a servant for her cruel stepmother and two stepsisters. She wants to go to the ball where Prince Gilbert is to select a wife. Barbara appears and transforms Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella’s clothing into gowns and a pumpkin into a coach and mice as coachmen so they can attend The witch Tekla appears to do the shoes, giving Cinderella a pair of glass slippers. As they set out, they run into a body. This turns out to be Mr Hans, the royal hairdresser. Little Red Riding Hood deduces that they didn’t kill him but that he had been murdered elsewhere. They agree to cover up the body so they can proceed on to the ball. There the prince chooses to dance with Cinderella over all the other attendees. The ball is then interrupted with the discovery of Mr Hans’s body. With both the prince and the stepsister Anne accused of killing Mr Hans, Little Red Riding Hood steps forward as detective to ascertain who the real killer is.
This is a film is based on a short story that appears in a 2020 collection by Aito Ayoagi where he retells fairytales with a darker twist. The film is directed by Yuichi Fukuda, who has made Gintama (2017) among other works such as Kids Police (2023) where detectives are transformed into children; the superhero films HK: Forbidden Superhero (2013), Jossies (2014), Hentai Kamen: The Abnormal Crisis (2016); the manga adaptation Psychic Kusuo (2017); the tv adaptation From Today, It’s My Turn: The Movie (2020); and the Christmas fantasy Black Night Parade (2022), among others.
Once Upon a Time falls into a series of fairytale deconstructions we have had since at least the 1980s going back to the likes of The Company of Wolves (1984) and passing through works like Freeway (1996) and modern dark adult works like Red Riding Hood (2011), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) and Beauty and the Beast (2014), to tv series such as tv’s Grimm (2011-7), Once Upon a Time (2011-8) and Beauty and the Beast (2012-6). (See Fairytales).
Once Upon a Crime offers one of the strangest of these genre hybrids in that it is a mash-up between a fairytale (multiple fairytales in fact) and a detective story – one where Little Red Riding Hood develops detective skills and the ball Cinderella attends is halted so that a murder investigation can be conducted – where both the prince and one of the stepsisters become suspects! There are some antecedents to this as well. There was the animated Hoodwinked! (2005), which deconstructed Little Red Riding Hood in terms of a detective story about what really happened. There was also Jasper Fforde’s Nursery Crimes books, which would make a great film someday, about detectives in the world of fairytale and nursery rhyme.
Once Upon a Crime is a very strange film. First of all, there is already the fantastical nature of the fairytale colliding with the grounded and rationalist nature of the detective story. To make matters even stranger, Yuichi Fukuda stages everything in a very over-the-top manner. The costuming is lavishly eccentric, while the performances of some of the supporting cast – especially Midoriko Kimura as the witch Barbara and Masaki Haji as the murdered hairdresser – are allowed to let go without restraint. By contrast, Takanori as the prince plays utterly rigid and stiff. There are also lines that seem designed to break the fourth wall where one character talks about needing a licence for the coach only to be reminded that “You don’t need a license in this age, so you don’t have to worry.” Or asides about how the prince’s outfit “would make most people look like a lion tamer.”
The mix is odd, lightweight and weird. The detective story is okay if nothing much. The one thing that does bring it down is the [PLOT SPOILERS] twist revelation that Cinderella was the killer all along. The fairytale Cinderella is a character that has such a strong arc – from downtrodden stepdaughter forced to act as scullery maid to being granted the opportunity to go to the ball and winning the prince through her all-round goodness and beauty – that turning her into a villain who is worse than the stepmother and stepsisters turns Once Upon a Crime into a major downer.
Trailer here