Penelope

In the whimsical movie “Penelope,” title character Penelope Wilhern, played by Christina Ricci, seems to have it all. As the daughter of blue-blood aristocrats, she has money, charm, and a horde of suitors flocking to her door. Oh yeah, she also has a pig nose. “Penelope” is a modern-day fairy tale in an image-obsessed world that actually teaches girls to love themselves the way they are.

Penelope is heir not only to the family fortune, but to the family curse, as well, doomed to sport a pig nose until she finds true love. To hide her daughter’s ugliness and protect her from the press, her mother, played by Catherine O’Hara (“Home Alone”), does “what any normal mother would do”: She takes out the eye of invading paparazzo Lemon (Peter Dinklage, “The Station Agent”), fakes baby Penelope’s death, and locks the girl up in the family’s country estate.

As soon as Penelope turns 18, her mother hires a matchmaker and lines up a gaggle of eligible young aristocrats to woo her daughter and lift the curse. Despite Penelope’s cheerful nature and sizeable dowry, her would-be suitors all skedaddle once they see her hideous pig face.

Max (James McAvoy, “Atonement”), a gambler enlisted to help get a photo of Penelope, develops a touching relationship with her, despite the fact that she is hidden behind a mirror during their courtship while he is trying to exploit her. They immediately click when she catches him trying to steal an expensive first edition of a book.

In the film’s best scene, Penelope devises a scheme to figure out which instrument Max plays but will not reveal. The montage of Max playing a series of instruments while badly singing “You Are My Sunshine” with a full backup band is priceless. Penelope, too, finds Max endearing and reveals herself to him, but runs away to the big city once she realizes he’s a spy.

Her first stop in freedom is a pub where she meets Annie, a feisty, leather-clad, Vespa riding Reese Witherspoon (who also produced the movie). Penelope manages to elude her parents’ attempts to find her by hiding her nose under a scarf.

Of course, her nose gets revealed, as does the fact that she’s an heiress. She becomes a pig-nosed press darling. And obviously, since this is a Reese Witherspoon movie, she learns to love herself and gets her happily-ever-after. (Unfortunately for porcine fetishists, not in a “Shrek” way.)

“Penelope” is a charming movie that has none of the saccharine sweetness of other fanciful movies like “Enchanted.” The sets evoke the feel of an unconventional fairytale. The woodland colors in Penelope’s quarters are evidence of her affinity for nature while the harsh exposed brick of Max’s world shows the tragic desperation of his wasted talent and gambling addiction.

The visual representations of characters extend to their wardrobes. Penelope’s playful wardrobe of jumpers, opaque tights, and Mary Jane’s captures a girl on the edge of womanhood. Her blue coat with red piping and mismatched buttons becomes a symbol of unconventionality, as little girls go trick-or-treating in lower-budget versions of it.

McAvoy is a wonderful leading man and Catherine O’Hara is perfect as an overbearing mom. Another actor, Simon Woods, pops off the screen as Edward, an utterly repulsive upper-class twit.

Ricci does a terrific job looking cute—in fact, too cute. First-time director Mark Palansky played it safe with the nose: instead of misshapen, Penelope looks lovable. This makes scenes of would-be suitors jumping out the window and Edward’s tales of a horrendous pig-woman with dripping fangs hilariously implausible.

While Penelope is not high-film, it’s a charming modern-day fairy tale. The moral of the story? “It’s not the power of the curse, it’s the power you give the curse.”

—Crimson staff writer Candace I. Munroe can be reached at cimunroe@fas.harvard.edu.