Andy Tennant creates a light touch on this fresh take of an old classic. Tennant uses simple techniques in specific ways in order to visually tell his story on screen. For example, he only uses a dissolve twice in the film, to take us into the story and to draw us out. The first we see the da Vinci painting of Danielle dissolve into the setting of Danielle’s youth before it is used again at the end of the story once the tale is told by the Queen in order to pull us as the audience back into the current palace where she reveals the truth of the Cinderella legend that has been created by the people of France. Tennant also uses an overhead shot effectively in the film to reveal story. Once when Danielle exits her home to begin her day’s work. The shot shows how she is now consumed by the land that was once her father as on all sides she is surrounded by land and the camera creates a literal pressing down on the character to allow us as the audience to understand her circumstances from the imagery.
Tennant uses a similar shot of the writers leaving the Queen’s palace at the end of the film after receiving the true version of the Cinderella story. The director then shifts the shot to a sweeping wide shot. The choice to do this shows that Danielle is no longer trapped by her circumstances. Generations later she is being set free into the world so that her story might be told to everyone, and Tennant shows that in two camera setups. The majority of the film Tennant uses a locked off camera, but early in the film we see a looser frame created by the director when he’s shooting characters outside of the royal pretenses and customs demanded by culture, and when they transition into the presence of royalty we see that the camera becomes locked and rigid very much like the royal decrees that mandate a particular way of behaving. Lastly, instead of using fantastical elements to show this is a fairytale, Tennant uses natural elements in a magical way to reveal the true nature of the story. One example is the use of the sunrise to pull us into the story. It is the director’s visual way of saying there is nothing more like a fairytale than living in the world that we exist in.
