Blancanieves

Though it’s marketed as a new twist on Snow White, Blancanieves couldn’t be much more dissimilar and still be in the same family. The Spanish reinvention of the fairy tale takes place in the 1920s, is shot as a black and white silent movie, and gives us generous doses of flamenco music. It’s still somehow entirely modern, though. Macarena García is your Snow White (officially Carmen but also Blancanieves). She’s a bullfighter, carrying on the family tradition after she runs off with a troupe of dwarfs to escape her evil stepmother, Encarna (Maribel Verdú from Y Tu Mama Tambien). Blancanieves may be a tribute to films of a bygone era, but it’s much more than that. It’s a lovely, inventive, remarkable movie through and through. Hard to believe there was no room for this in the Best Foreign Language Film category this year.