Scarlet Harlot

Red Riding Hood

Directed by
Catherine Hardwicke 

Runtime: 100 min.

“It’s time to put on
your harlot’s robe,” virginal Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is reprimanded in Red Riding Hood. When a werewolf kills
her plain sister, Valerie is told, “You’re the pretty one.” Both accusation and
compliment are cultural curses—versions of director Catherine Hardwicke’s
vision of the expectations and limitations that oppress young girls.

Hardwicke’s take on
adolescent trouble also informed the first movie in the Twilight vampire/romance series (which critics hated until the
franchise became a blockbuster). That Hardwicke, with her expressive visual
style, was refused the chance to expand her sensitivity to teenage sexual and
spiritual yearning in the Twilight
sequels is one of the true calamities of recent pop culture. Red Riding Hood promised a natural,
exciting follow up—but too many commercial compromises get in her way.

While Twilight provided a perfect contemporary
synthesis for Hardwicke’s feminism, sensuality and pop perception—a new modern
myth based on the Stephenie Meyers bestsellers—Red Riding Hood forces her to remake traditional mythology and
fight her own contemporariness. The Old European setting with fairy-tale
castles, quaint villagers, costumed maidens and medieval customs is too
obvious—the discontents of puberty seem pre-interpreted and corny. Instead of
going beyond Meyers, beyond Bram Stoker, beyond the Bronte Sisters and the
Brothers Grimm, Hardwicke is forced to retrace steps that Neil Jordan made with
The Company of Wolves, his marvelous
1985 “Little Red Riding Hood” tale (which was, in fact, an improvement on
Angela Carter’s postmodern feminist-lit The
Bloody Chamber). 

Jordan’s werewolf
transformation idea contradicts Hardwicke’s fascination with undisguised human
appetite and willpower (also the key to her earlier films Lords of Dogtown and Thirteen).
Tangled up in myths she no longer believes, Hardwicke does routine critiques of
religious oppression: Gary Oldman, for example, as a priest who hunts the
werewolf and equally terrorizes the villagers—especially the pubescent girls.
Action scenes of werewolf attacks aren’t Hardwicke’s style—too fast and blurry.
The storybook colors and artificial settings don’t stir her imagination, nor
inspire her pique as dated mythology motivated Catherine Breillat’s ingenious,
transgressive Bluebeard. 

Valerie’s confession—“Maybe
there was something dark inside of me”—hints at anachronistic repression, an
idea that also gets bungled with Julie Christie’s sexy, all-knowing
grandmother. The only scene that works is the witch hunt in which Prudence (Kacey
Rohl) betrays Valerie. “You don’t fool me. You were always too good, too
pretty, too perfect,” Prudence sneers with primal mean-girl petulance. 

Too bad Hardwicke
didn’t adapt The Scarlet Letter—better
yet, she could have transformed the asinine Easy
A. The only time Red Riding Hood
feels right is when Valerie becomes like Twilight’s
Bella and asserts, “I am less afraid”—of social dogma, patriarchy and
werewolves. A wayward explanation that links the werewolf to incest extends the
story’s medieval metaphors but it’s creepier than necessary, a detail of our
Lady Gaga-era, where all symbols have lost meaning. Red Riding Hood isn’t enlightened; it’s a case of Hollywood
desperation and box-office fear.