Director: Iain Softley
Starring: Aneurin Barnard, Tuppence Middleton, Frances de la Tour, Alexandra Roach, Kerry Fox
Running Time: 100 minutes
Certificate: 15
Extras: Interviews with cast and crew.
TRAP FOR CINDERELLA comes to DVD and Blu-Ray after a relatively low-key run at cinemas back in July. The film, directed by Iain Softley (K-PAX, BACKBEAT), who also adapts the novel by Sebastien Japrisot (A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT), revolves around Micky (Tuppence Middleton), a girl who loses her memory after surviving a terrifying accident at a French retreat that kills her childhood friend. Trying to rebuild her life back in London, Micky tries to understand the events that surrounded the accident, the people that she left behind, and the mystery of her lost-friend-with-a-silly-name, ‘Do,’ `played by Alexandra Roach.
TRAP FOR CINDERELLA has been adapted for the screen before, by André Cayatte as ‘Piège pour Cendrillon’ back in 1965 in its native tongue. This modern day, English-language retelling refocusses the story to contemporary London, though saves a large proportion for the south of France where the pivotal point of the ‘accident’ takes place during the opening credits. What follows is a largely pretentious journey, full of gratuitous topless shots and pretentious banter that seems to takes forever to get to where it’s going, challenging the most attentive of attention spans. When we do start to dig through the fat to get to the meat and the many questions in your bordering-on-bored mind start to be answered, we’re beyond the point of caring and some of the many twists and turns that are delivered in the final act are so over the top and unbelievable that they leave you largely unsatisfied.
Softley has always been one of those directors whose work borders somewhere between the satisfactory (K-PAX, THE SKELETON KEY), or the very good (BACKBEAT, THE WINGS OF THE DOVE). TRAP FOR CINDERELLA clearly lies in the former, a run-of-the-mill thriller that would have made a cracking little television movie rather than a theatrical release. Viewing it on the DVD format for what it is, its not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but blimey, it could could have been so much better.
In terms of the extras on this DVD release, all we have is a collection of interviews with Softley and his cast and crew. All informative about the film’s production, but basic junket b-roll fodder easily found online and not anything to add to the value of this release.
TRAP FOR CINDERELLA is released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK on Monday 4th November, 2013.
