Director – Mark Palansky, Screenplay – Leslie Caveny, Producers – Jennifer Simpson, Scott Steindorff & Reese Witherspoon, Photography – Michael Amathieu, Music – Joby Talbot, Visual Effects – Double Negative (Supervisor – Jody Johnson), Special Effects Supervisor – James Weguelin, Prosthetics Supervisor – Scott Stoddard, Prosthetics – Neal Scanlan Studio, Production Design – Amanda McArthur. Production Company – Type A Films/Tatira Active/Grosvenor Park Media.
Cast
Christina Ricci (Penelope Wilhern), James McAvoy (Max Campion/Jimmy), Catherine O’Hara (Jessica Wilhern), Peter Dinklage (Lemon), Richard E. Grant (Franklin Wilhern), Simon Woods (Edward Vanderman), Michael Feast (Jake/Witch), Reese Witherspoon (Annie), Ronni Ancona (Wanda), Burn Gorman (Larry Bonsa), Richard Leaf (Jack the Bartender), Lenny Henry (Krull), Russell Brand (Sam the Jazz Club Owner), Nigel Havers (Mr Vanderman), Simon Chandler (Doctor)
Plot
After the heir to the Wilhern family gets a maid pregnant and abandons her, a witch places a curse on the family. The curse states that the daughter of the family will be born with the face of a pig until one of her own kind will love her. For the next few centuries, the Wilhern line bears only sons until the birth of the daughter Penelope in the present day who emerges with pig-like facial features. After the photographer Lemon tries to sneak in to get a picture, Penelope’s mother Jessica tries to fake Penelope’s death as an infant and thereafter keeps her permanently sheltered inside the house. As Penelope grows into a young woman, her parents try to bring suitors from aristocratic blood to meet her, but all of them jump out the window after seeing her face. The latest suitor Edward Vanderman flees to the police after seeing Penelope’s face only to be ridiculed in the papers. Edward is found by Lemon and agrees to team with him to clear his name. They contrive a scheme to get a photo of Penelope by sending in an aristocratic suitor in Max Campion, an inveterate gambler who has squandered his family’s fortune. Instead, Max develops a connection with Penelope. He inspires her to break out from her closeted life and leave home. However, her venture into the outside world brings the press hungry for pictures of the pig-faced girl.
Penelope was a feature-length directorial debut for Mark Palansky. The film was a production from Type A Films, a company set up by actress Reese Witherspoon, which primarily served to make more of Witherspoon’s Legally Blonde films. Palansky subsequently went on to direct the SF film Rememory (2017), which also starred Peter Dinklage.
Penelope has the feel of being based on a Fairytale, even though it isn’t. It does have a number of similarities to the various attempts to modernise Beauty and the Beast – in particular, the British tv movie Beauty (2004), which had a curmudgeonly, disfigured British aristocrat Martin Clunes develop an attraction to his gardener, and the subsequent teen romance Beastly (2011) where high school teenager Alex Pettyfer is subject to a curse that disfigures his face.
The biggest disappointment that Penelope foists on us is its build-up about the hideousness of the disfigurement that Christina Ricci’s Penelope suffers. We expect something awful, especially when this is teased with repeated scenes of her suitors diving out of windows after seeing her. However, when what she looks like is unveiled, and all that we get is Christina Ricci with a pert pig-like snout, the results are so underwhelming on all the build-up as to be almost laughable. In reality, you see people with far more disfiguring birthmarks, burn marks, acne scars, bruises and facial deformities on the street in everyday life. The reaction that everyone gives to her appearance seems something hyped solely by the plot to make its point.
Christina Ricci looking adorably cute despite pig-like features apparently so hideous they cause all who see her to jump out windowsJames McAvoy woos Penelope (Christina Ricci) via a chess game through a one-way mirror
This is not helped by the casting of Christina Ricci. Ricci had first appeared as a child actor in Mermaids (1990) and gained fame with The Addams Family (1991), aged only eleven. She had spent the latter half of the 1990s carving out a niche as indie teen name and was 26 at the time Penelope was made. She was just starting to come into her own as a young woman and looks quite beautiful. Even the minor blemish of a pig snout makes her look more cute than it ever does hideous.
The other piece that fails to work is the setting. It feels very much like a film that should have been set amongst the British aristocracy. The whole bit about Penelope having to marry one of her own aristocratic class seems absurd when you try to think of the film in terms of being an American one – what, she has to find children that went to Ivy League schools? Moreover, the film was actually shot in England and features a substantially British cast – James McAvoy, Richard E. Grant, Lennie Henry, Nigel Havers. Burn Gorman and a young unknown Russell Brand, although there are also several Americans present – Ricci, Witherspoon and Catherine O’Hara as Ricci’s mother. The question is why they simply didn’t make this into an outright British production.
There are certain aspects the film does really well. Christina Ricci is always watchable in everything she does, even when it is a nothing romantic role like this where she has the predicable arc of the sheltered wallflower who discovers the outside world. The scenes with her and James McAvoy as the cliché of a fallen aristocrat who you just know is going to be redeemed (something that starts to happen a mere couple of scenes in) have some sparkle. There is incredible art direction and set dressing for the mansion, in particular the lavishness of Ricci’s bedroom.
On the other hand, the script is a predictable marshmallow where you know every move and turn that it is going to take from the point that every character is introduced. There is nothing to either the script or Mark Palansky’s direction that brings the material to life. Which only feels like a waste of potential and the assemblage of a fantastic cast.
