ABSTRACT
In Secrets beyond the Door, Maria Tatar (2004) explores ‘how the Bluebeard plot competes with the Cinderella story as our culture’s paradigm for romantic excitement and how it provides opportunities for reflecting on the play between intimacy and distance, disclosure and repression’ (p. 8). This chapter will look at how the Bluebeard fairy tale is updated by two distinctive films of the first decade of this century, Jane Campion’s In the Cut (2003) and Andrea Arnold’s Red Road (2006). In doing so, I will explore how the Bluebeard story is altered by the decision to transpose it to an urban setting, and how Tatar’s binary oppositions of intimacy/distance and disclosure/repression are tested by the relocation of Bluebeard to the city. An overview of significant historical adaptations of the story, and a consideration of the relevance of location in three particular examples of the tale, will establish the link between the Bluebeard narrative and the role of landscape therein, after which I will examine the importance of a specifically urban setting to both films’ successful drawing out of Bluebeard’s themes. I conclude with a reflection on the centrality in the films of the play between psychology and place.
