Princess (2006)

U.S. DVD Release

August, a priest who has been away on missionary work, returns home upon hearing of the death of his sister Christina from a drug overdose. His plan is to take in his sister’s young daughter Mia and raise her. His reason for this, aside from the fact that she is his niece, is that Christina was also known as Princess, and Princess was an incredibly popular porn star who chose to raise her daughter in the brothel that she worked and lived. August had tried before to take his sister away from this life, yet this was to no avail.

Now he plans to get Mia as far away from this world as possible. Initially though he wants the company that produces the porn his sister starred in to be taken off the shelves and destroyed. As you can imagine the company aren’t going to just let their major money maker just disappear off the streets, so they decide to ignore August. Not the wisest of moves, as although he is a priest he is also a man hellbent of wreaking his vengeance on those that he thinks caused his sister’s death.

First off, Princess is an animated movie, with the odd live action shot thrown in, and is subtitled as it is a Danish movie. Don’t let that fool you though into thinking this is a nice fluffy and cuddly tale. No, no my friends, even the above plot outline does not really do justice to this bleak, violent and incredibly disturbing movie. Princess treads a fine line in what some might find acceptable and what isn’t and doesn’t flinch away from the harsh realities that the protagonists endure. There are the occasional moments of levity to be found, however, they are few and far between.

The story itself though is quite gripping, and as mentioned is predominantly animated with the live action footage being limited mainly to Princess’s video collection that August acquires. This collection helps the viewer dig deeper into the story, and makes it all the more tragic as the pieces fall into place.

Princess is wonderfully shot and the voice actors do a fantastic job of portraying the onscreen characters through their speech.

This movie is the kind that will stick in your mind long after if finishes and does bare repeated viewings, if you can stomach it. It is unrelenting powerful stuff that I highly recommend to those that like to push the limits of what they view. Princess is definitely not family viewing, well, depending on who your family are I suppose. That being said this is animation that is squarely aimed at a more mature audience, and one that I was very impressed with.

On a final note, I would have liked to have seen some special features to accompany this release. As it is it only comes with a Trailer, Scene Selection and various Audio options. It is just as well that the feature movie itself more than makes up for these shortcomings.