Login
One of the strangest, most hypnotic films I’ve ever seen, Tales of Beatrix Potter is a charming little highbrow detour in children’s entertainment. Told entirely through pantomime, dance, and classical music, even in wraparound segments of Potter as a youth sketching her eventual creations, Beatrix Potter is somehow more engaging than that description would seem. Yes, I am aware of a pure ballet spectacle of adults in costumes of Potter’s beloved drawings is a strange thing to recommend, but I’m doing it.
At times I was a little lost as to what character is this one or that one was as Potter’s literary world passed me by as a kid, but the beats of the stories are simple enough to follow. It’s also a joy to watch the dancers express their characters through body language. The frogs leap about, the avian creatures appear bottom heavy, the pigs skip about, and the squirrels seem to move quicker than the rest. It’s smart acting choices that really sell the individual personalities of the animal characters.
The whole thing looks like a storybook come to life as the ponds and forest settings appear appropriately enlarged for the size of the characters. For instance, there’s a scene where mice destroy a doll house, and everything is wonderfully artificial. For all the strangeness of the aesthetic choices, it’s the whimsy of Tales of Beatrix Potter that registers the most. It creates an entire world and commits to it, eccentricities and all. The world could use some more curios for family entertainment like this one.
