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19 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
interesting attack on the porn industry ... but somewhat empty ..., 26 October 2006
7/10
Author: londonviewer from London, UK

It was a bit of a surprise to discover that the majority of the film consists of animated sequences, with just a bit of grainy video footage (the preview I'd read suggested otherwise) ... but after recovering from that shock, I found the film somehow lacking - whilst watching it, I suspended my disbelief, and was quite take by the characters and winced at the violence. But looking back, it all just seems a bit unreal - whereas thinking back to violent non-animated films, I recall them as violent ... this I just recall as being animated !

At the London Film Festival screening, the director was on stage afterwards for an interesting Q&A - where he defended the slow pace of the film, by insisting that he would have liked to make it faster, but the 1.5m dollar budget didn't allow. He also revealed that part of his inspiration for making the film was the work of Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, whose photos he initially found erotic ... but eventually he considered the women behind the photos, and how they must all be daughters and sisters (an issue he repeatedly brought up). Anders insisted that in Denmark, whilst pornography is openly available, the women involved are regarded as being a sort of underclass - and his film was partly an attempt to expose this hypocrisy. He admitted that they had considered different endings, but the one he chose was the only one that seemed to work !

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17 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
It could never have been made as a live movie..., 29 June 2006
9/10
Author: Archon from Denmark

This is great anime for adults. The story moves you, affects you, so that you will remember it. It is like the hardcore Japanese manga anime stuff with over the top violence and gore, but also with lots of implied sick, twisted, disturbing things. It is truly cruel to watch. A lot of other things I watch are considered sick and disturbed but they never affected me. Princess did...

Sometimes real live film appears in the film, mainly when the characters watch TV. Maybe that is to make viewers more involved in the characters? But I feel the anime characters are more engaging. I do not think the movie gained anything by doing this. Especially the last 1 minute or so of live stuff should have been deleted.

The animations/drawings were great. Especially the lighting. The perspective in the lines were considerably unnatural, which was annoying for me. The characters were portrayed really well. The story was incredibly tragic and great.

I give it a 9 out of 10 if I pretend the last minute is gone.

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10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
An incredible film, 24 June 2006
10/10
Author: pod-21 from Denmark

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

August is a priest who returns to Denmark from missionary work to take care of his five year old niece Mia when his sister Christina dies of a drug overdose. August has spent years trying to save others through his work but was powerless to help Christina, whose life was a downward spiral since achieving fame in life as the titular "Princess"- a porn star. His feelings of guilt turn to anger when he realizes that his sister wasn't the only victim of this seedy underworld, but that little Mia has a long documented history of sexual and physical abuse. He directs his rage towards the men behind the camera that used and abused his sister and her daughter to line their own pockets. Thus begins a bloody tale of vengeance as August, with Mia as his side, resolves to wipe his sisters porn legacy from the face of the planet, while all the time trying to reach his prize- Charlie- the man who was Christina's lover, and who first brought her fame as the Princess.

To say that the film is good is to do it a disservice. The film is simply put a work of art. The animation, while always limited, achieves something in its simplicity that all the millions of costly pixels (-seemingly employed by everyone and their third cousin twice removed these days) simply cannot. Honesty. August's journey is a cautionary tale- making no bones about the fact that the first victim of revenge (no matter how good the case for revenge may be) is always the one who seeks it. This is a complex film which challenges the viewer in that it makes us understand and indeed root for August but, as the body count rises, literally destroys any good in him in the process. What starts out as wish fulfillment fantasy ala Kill Bill, turns decidedly nasty as Morgenthaler never lets you forget that the lives lost to August's cause are not always deserving, or if indeed they are, they are only deserving seen from a certain point of view. There are no universal rights or wrongs, no innocents. Just people. I would love to write more on this point, but firmly believe that it would spoil the journey for anyone coming into the film fresh.

Morgenthaler is in a league that few can claim. I was constantly and happily reminded of Scorsese ala "Mean streets" and "Taxi Driver", of Towne and Polanski ala "Chinatown". There is a fierce directness to this work that is staggering and his decisions are constantly surprising. The film is inter-cut with live action footage, taken by August in his youth when he was a camera nut. This lays out the back story of their lives and charts how all this came to pass. I was wary of this concept going into the film as I have rarely thought that mixing these two media was successful. With one exception he pulls it off, the shaky home video feel adds credence to the animated world (not to mention the porn, which with the exception of the opening sequence is always shown live action), plus providing us with a third reel whammy that will knock you for six.

The star of the film though is Mia. She is the ultimate in innocence corrupted. Where as in "Perfect Blue" we watched as a childlike young woman is tortured by a sexual predator, here we have an actual child who has experienced much worse, but is too young to have any idea of the psychological consequences. She is hurt, frightened, tragically sad, but only seen from our point of view. She was raised in this world, and that's all she really knows. Playing house for her is something entirely different then for other children. It is played for laughs at times, but Morgenthaler chokes that laugh in your throat by never letting you forget the sheer horror of what it is you are watching. It leaves a lasting mark on you that is hard to shake.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough.

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Gets progressively better as the film goes on, 23 October 2006
7/10
Author: gzamikes from United States

I knew nothing about this going in and it's not easy to tell what's going on for a good while. The plot reveals itself in a different way than most movies do and until there's a general idea of what's happening, the movie seems like an adult swim knock-off wannabe.

However, once everything is set into place, it's very gripping and stays with you until the end with a great story plus wonderful character depth and development.

The film is part animation and part grainy digital video. The digital video is used to represent a character who is no longer alive shown through home movies at random insertions. The home movies style kinda detracts from the story but it's not all bad, there's an interesting scene where a car crash from the outside is animated and from inside is shown with the grainy video.

Although, for the most part there's animation which is spectacular. I'm not sure if it's a company located outside of the country the film comes from but it's not in the exaggerated anime style. That means the animation is there but you're able to actually focus on the story. The style of animation also makes the violence pretty graphic. Understand that this is an R rated movie for a reason and some parts even in animation are tough to take in.

With proper distribution, this could become a midnight movie cult classic.

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Straight and sharp as an arrow shot into the sun, 2 April 2007
10/10
Author: marko mihalinec (marko@zuti-titl.com) from Croatia

It has all the elements of modern visual culture - P.O.V. camera, smart usage of CGI and strong hit-in the face animated story-telling. And it has soul. The thing that most nowadays production compromisingly neglects due to better box office income. I honestly cannot seriously accept comments that animation in Princess is lame! It can be put out only by someone who is just brainwashed with console games and CGI hyperproduction blockbusters. This is hell of a strong movie and much more. It just begins at the end. Unfortunately, nowadays it's so rare to take something inside yourself from cinema, besides full belly of popcorn mixed with Coca-cola after two hour bombardment of easy to forget moving pictures. This one is animated feature but not a fairytale of king, castle and prehistorik squirrel but real, present life from everyone's neighbourhood we would rather not to happen. Can't wait to see Echo with Pusher's favourite Kim Bodnia. Keep it on Anders.

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
August goes on a bloody vendetta against the sex industry, 20 June 2006
8/10
Author: thorwl from Jyllinge, Denmark

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Princess is a visually stunning piece of adult animation. It takes a swing at the porno and sex industry in a pretty rough way, and I think the director Anders Morgenthaler truly wanted to tell his audience something with this flick. The combination of real film and animation works amazingly well and adds some extra debt to the characters. Somehow it feels more realistic when you get to see the voice behind the character, which you do in this film. (That was my spoiler I suppose) Go see Princess for extraordinary entertainment, sex, blood and violence and a statement that hits you in the face. I think we can expect great things from Anders Morgenthaler in the future, this being his first movie to go to the movie theaters.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
An emotional deluge of justified outrage, 3 July 2006
8/10
Author: sarastro7 from Denmark

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Stylistically, Princess is unique and innovative and extremely well made; even to the extent of being called an art movie. Contents-wise, however, it is not an art movie, but purely an outpouring of anger. The story is good and important (if quite simple), and one understands the emotion that underlies it. It is a movie that deserves a high grade simply for initiating a discussion of this sort of subject matter. The porn industry is a crucible of enormous individual tragedy for those caught in it, and it is easy to blame those who seem immediately responsible: the producers. But, of course, porn is a consequence of larger social mechanisms, and to get rid of the type of porn (which today is almost all of it) that demeans and degrades women requires larger social changes. I suspect Morgenthaler is aware of this (esp. because the culprit, Charlie, survives the protagonists), but realizes that one must crawl before being able to walk. This is his opening statement, and it doesn't penetrate to any deeper social causes of the subject treated, but later works of his might. Let's hope.

We live in an era that hardly even talks about this kind of subject matter, and that is part of the problem. We cannot have a meaningful public dialog about such things until the subject has been broached in some initial, fairly simple way that makes people willing to discuss it. Once the discussion has been opened, debate on the deeper causes of the problems can be engaged in. Kudos to Morgenthaler for attempting to treat a very serious subject which hardly anybody else have tried to take a good look at before.

8 out of 10.

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7 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Fresh of breath air., 17 September 2006
7/10
Author: john_loves_tennis from Toronto, Canada

As the film festival winds down and all the big stars leave the city, the reality of returning back to the normal life begins to sink in. But it's not totally over yet. There is still one more day left, tomorrow I get to watch Sheitan, which hopefully isn't Sheity as the title somehow suggests. Tonight, I saw Princess, which was everything but sheity.

Princess is a Denmark / German import that is comprised of 80% animation and 20% live action. The director, Anders Morgenthaler, puts together a picture that is definitely not something you see in theatres around here. There are a number of facets that make Morgenthaler's Princess stand up tall from the crowd (cliché #1). Firstly, the subject matter; the movie is about a priest who effectively quits his job and coherently scraps his religious beliefs when he allows his life to be rattled by rage and driven by violence. Secondly, the impetus behind the forthcoming violence has never been seen before. The priest (August) (Yes his name is also the name of the popular summer month) returns back to his hometown after hearing of his sister's death. What he learns from here only sickens his soul to the point of blinding his judgment of appropriate justice. He learns that his sister (Christina) (aka Princess) (her porn queen pseudonym) has died an unnecessary death due to the misogyny of Charlie, the president of Lust Paradise, the porno studio Christina worked for. Ironically, August the priest, reacts to this loss, not with sorrow and harmless grief, but with intense and violent vengeance.

The third facet then is the path of destruction that August sets forth on -- towards his ultimate goal of murdering Charlie. This is not your typical Pixar movie which keeps kid audiences giggling and upbeat, but rather a much more subdued, dark movie that consistently permeates a tone that makes you feel sorry and more sorry for the characters on screen. Not mentioned yet, but absolutely crucial to the cohesiveness of the story is Mia, Christina's under-loved, abused and emotionally scarred daughter. After Christina's death, she is taken under August's wings. August solemnly tells Christina that he will take care of her and never let her go. It is through August's acquaintance with his alienated niece, that he finds the straw that breaks his camel's back (Grrrreat cliché #2). He learns that August was assaulted by Charlie and later discovers he even sexually molested Mia. The child has seen the world through the wrong glasses and this irritates August up and through to the existential plane of frustration. He believes Mia does not deserve to live in this kind of reality, and she doesn't need a matriarchal role model who has sex for a living. In a disturbing and emotionally awkward scene, Mia joins some children in the courtyard of August's apartment for a game of doctor. Since the roles of the doctor, nurse and patient were already taken - Mia feels obligated to succumb to the only role she knows; a whore. After announcing this, the children react apprehensively, but curiously play along. In the next cut, the nurse has left, leaving the doctor and the patient or the two boys with Mia, the whore. From a low angle, we see Mia almost teasing the boys with her skirt as she slowly lifts it up and over her crotch. Awed by this novel experience the boys dumbfoundedly ask what to do. From witnessing her mother on home movies, Mia naturally and naively tells one of the boys to get on top of her. At this point, the situation gets tense when one of the boys picks up a twig and connotatively suggests another fashion of entry. Mia still has some ounce of moral judgment to realize this is wrong and resists, but the boys push forward until --- oops, you'll have to watch the movie, because I'm getting drowsy!

It is powerful scenes like this which poignantly drive the audience through a series of long thoughtful gazes to satisfying sentiments of fitting vengeance and brutalization (it's not healthy to repress anything, including our inner most prehistoric instincts!). Princess shines in a genre of it's own which resists calling itself: an action movie, a drama, a dark comedy, a cartoon, a live-action movie or an unsheity movie because Princess does not holistically fit into any one of these groups, because it belongs in all of them. Kudos to Denmark for releasing such an unbarred film that liberates viewers with a penchant for cerebral activity to think beyond convention!

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9 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
A priest turned vigilante enters the underground world of the Swedish porn industry to avenge his murdered sister and eradicate evidence of her pornographic career., 16 September 2006
9/10
Author: linkkk from Canada

Princess was the most anticipated film of the Midnight Madness program this year at TIFF for me after I heard the basic premise of the film and was surprised to learn that a story of that nature would be told in an animated feature. It turned out to be a very hardcore noir revenge tale that was gritty as hell and dealt with some very sensitive material. I wish there was some official website/trailer, or even some images I could find on the net from this movie but I can't seem to much at all. To compare it to other works I guess the movie felt to me like it had certain elements from films like Taxi Driver, Leon: The Professional, and a load of other film noir just set in a more underground modern day euro trash setting.

The story follows a man named August, a priest in the opening of the film, who finally tracks down his pregnant sister, whom he discovers in a very shocking scene engaged with several men in a gang bang. The images of that and the character's reaction, framed in an intense close up of his quivering blue eyes that look like they could crack at any moment, pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Years later, August's sister, who we learn was a renowned porn star named Princess, is found murdered, and her daughter now orphaned. August must now take his sister's daughter Mia under his care, while slowly discovering the deep trauma this child has suffered living under such a degrading, sexually oppressive environment. The connection these two characters form is what's most powerful about this movie, as they both endure the loss of a sister/mother who fell into such a disgusting, dangerous world, and Mia who is probably only about 5-8 years old slowly learns who her mother really was.

What definitely carries the film though is August's transformation from rational, peaceful man and caring figure into an infuriated angel of death to those responsible for killing his sister and continuing to make money from her Adult Video sales and merchandise, exploiting her even in death, while trying to eliminate all the existing pornographic material of his sister. You even begin to see symbolic traces of religious empowerment in August's extreme actions later on in the film. This man reaches such a breaking point that when he finally unleashes the results will leave you speechless. The level of violence in this film is surprising at times, though never becomes too indulgent and over the top, as brutality almost seems quite necessary and appropriate at times given the subject matter and themes of the film. This is a man who enters a world that completely contradicts everything he holds to be morally right and pure, a world that destroyed his only sister, and whom he is somewhat responsible for plunging her into as you'll learn later on in the film. I wish i could rant on more about the animation and direction in it too. Really, the animated medium this story reaches it's audience is so effectively used, every transition and image is so well executed, while the animation is quite simplistic yet very well suited to the gritty places and faces we're introduced to. 20% of the film is actually live action camcorder footage which appears as glimpses into the character's pasts, as August used to record everything on his video camera, though we never actually see him in any of these live action flashbacks. There is so much beauty to this film despite much of it's vile content; the settings, depth of character & expression, atmosphere, colors and soundtrack all create such a wonderfully hypnotic visual experience and a film that I eagerly await to see again. I doubt it'll ever get much of a theatrical release given the level of violence and sexuality in it, especially when dealing with a small child, but lets hope there'll be more buzz around Princess in the future.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Strange, defiantly non-PC, anti-porn tale with fascist politics, 26 August 2007
6/10
Author: fertilecelluloid from Mountains of Madness

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Imagine Paul Schrader's "Hardcore" updated for the internet generation and animated. That might give you some idea where the oddball "Princess" is coming from. August, a priest, partly blames himself for the fact that his young, dead sister, Christina, became a famous porn star named Princess. Taking Christina's young daughter, Mia, under his wing, the angry priest begins to dismantle the Danish porn business by torturing producers and firebombing their buildings. Mia accompanies him on his anti-porn campaigns and is even invited to sink a sharp garden instrument into the groin of one cowering producer. August's ultimate mission is to find and annihilate Charlie, the man responsible for Christina's ultimate "success" and reputation as a superwhore. The film is certainly original and defiantly non-PC. Mia is portrayed as a product of her mother's pornographic world, and "acts out" the behavior of whores and porn stars she has encountered. The film uses non-animated, live action footage of Christina to give us a broader perspective of her world. This footage is introduced primarily when Mia or August watch old videotapes of Christina's life. "Princess" is not fast paced or dynamic like a manga, even though its bright, glowing anime style feels Japanese at times. The violence is brutal, and the inclusion of a very young child in these scenes gives the film a disturbing edge. It is a film worth seeing, but it is not entirely satisfying because it plays a little too loose with its fascist politics.

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