Saw this at the Berlinale 2018, where it was part of the Competition for the Golden/Silver Bear. For starters, all three genre labels that IMDB shows, Comedy, Drama and Western, are fully applicable to this movie. The only minus point that I can come up with, is that its running time may be deemed too long for its contents. On the other hand, in Westerns prairie time counts differently, and maybe the slow pacing is intended and appropriate after all. Take for instance the two men waiting for a passing coach to pick them up, obviously not running on a time table and the two men just are about to wait patiently. Apart from setting the mood for things to come, this scene also happens to connect a few props from the beginning with the ending, making the circle round so to say. It was something that I did not expect, and I still am not sure I understood it correctly.
I'm glad that the usual westerns clichés are avoided: no horse chases, no posse going after a suspect, no bar fights, and only one single Indian. I could not spot any good or bad characters in this story, in the tradi¬tional black&white sense, maybe only the Indian can be considered as bad, despite his coming to the rescue out of an impasse in an earlier scene. Of course, nice landscapes, plenty of it even, enough to call it a road movie, albeit that being a misnomer due to the absence of real roads in the wilderness.
One can argue whether the humor is really humorous, or that it is just making fun of some people not really fit to operate in the Wild West. The only capable survivalist is Penelope, so it seems, contrary to the men we see most of the running time as being helpless, despite everything they do is done with the best of intentions. They are portrayed rather demeaningly, which some people find hilarious (but I'm not). In other words, the "comedy" aspects are insufficient to come to a recommendable product. The two treated in the most condes-cending manner are Samual and the vicar, but the laugh is too easy, impossible to not feel a bit embarrassed, so cannot be considered humorous overall.
The "drama" elements of the movie can be amply found in the fact that everyone follows his own logic, all of them really full of good intentions, but what they do goes terribly wrong. They mostly fail due to being not up to the task of surviving in the prairie with many potential hostilities lurking around the corner. There are some unexpected turns of events, all of those very different from that we would have assumced given the situation. No raid by Indians, no shoot-out a la High Noon, no wolves threatening some campers, and so on. In fact, most turns of events are not due to humans being incapable to survive in this part of the world, but because of "normal" incompetence as also frequently observed outside the prairie.
Finally, a few positive words about some random aspects. Firstly, the opening scene with two people waiting for a stagecouch, one wanting to leave the West, and the other one wanting to go there, but both wanting a fresh start for compelling reasons. The Bible carried by one of them, appears lateron a few times in the story and takes care of some mild humor, nothing blasphemic however. Secondly, the wedding ring that Samual brought with him to offer Penelope, returns later in the final scene in totally different circumstances. Are both to be regarded as examples of clever script writing, or merely far fetched, or sought to add some extra to an otherwise shallow story??
All in all, mixed feelings about Damsel, although I applaud several nice finds as described above. A few weeks earlier, as part of IFFR 2018 in Rotterdam, I saw another Western without cliché western elements, Sweet Country (Thornton, 2017). When on the lookout for a recent (anti)western example, is was much better than this one in all respects.
I'm glad that the usual westerns clichés are avoided: no horse chases, no posse going after a suspect, no bar fights, and only one single Indian. I could not spot any good or bad characters in this story, in the tradi¬tional black&white sense, maybe only the Indian can be considered as bad, despite his coming to the rescue out of an impasse in an earlier scene. Of course, nice landscapes, plenty of it even, enough to call it a road movie, albeit that being a misnomer due to the absence of real roads in the wilderness.
One can argue whether the humor is really humorous, or that it is just making fun of some people not really fit to operate in the Wild West. The only capable survivalist is Penelope, so it seems, contrary to the men we see most of the running time as being helpless, despite everything they do is done with the best of intentions. They are portrayed rather demeaningly, which some people find hilarious (but I'm not). In other words, the "comedy" aspects are insufficient to come to a recommendable product. The two treated in the most condes-cending manner are Samual and the vicar, but the laugh is too easy, impossible to not feel a bit embarrassed, so cannot be considered humorous overall.
The "drama" elements of the movie can be amply found in the fact that everyone follows his own logic, all of them really full of good intentions, but what they do goes terribly wrong. They mostly fail due to being not up to the task of surviving in the prairie with many potential hostilities lurking around the corner. There are some unexpected turns of events, all of those very different from that we would have assumced given the situation. No raid by Indians, no shoot-out a la High Noon, no wolves threatening some campers, and so on. In fact, most turns of events are not due to humans being incapable to survive in this part of the world, but because of "normal" incompetence as also frequently observed outside the prairie.
Finally, a few positive words about some random aspects. Firstly, the opening scene with two people waiting for a stagecouch, one wanting to leave the West, and the other one wanting to go there, but both wanting a fresh start for compelling reasons. The Bible carried by one of them, appears lateron a few times in the story and takes care of some mild humor, nothing blasphemic however. Secondly, the wedding ring that Samual brought with him to offer Penelope, returns later in the final scene in totally different circumstances. Are both to be regarded as examples of clever script writing, or merely far fetched, or sought to add some extra to an otherwise shallow story??
All in all, mixed feelings about Damsel, although I applaud several nice finds as described above. A few weeks earlier, as part of IFFR 2018 in Rotterdam, I saw another Western without cliché western elements, Sweet Country (Thornton, 2017). When on the lookout for a recent (anti)western example, is was much better than this one in all respects.