The much-anticipated Cruella (dir. Craig Gillespie, 2021), which has just been released all across the country in its newly-reopened cinemas, is quite a palatable film and it’s not that hard for a laugh or two to slip out at one of its cutesy jokes, however pretentious one might be. If the test that large-audience comedies must stand is that of laughter, while lacking any kind of pressure, and even in a pretty empty cinema (and the audience, surprisingly enough, was not made up of children), Cruella makes no effort in passing it. After all, the film is quite satisfying visually – maybe even absolutely delectable and impressive in terms of set design – and could well work out as a sort of hybrid fashion film.

In a spectacular show of force when it comes to costumes and in the spirit of an origin story, we see Cruella trying to make peace between the voices of good and evil, passing from being a restless orphaned child to a talented young woman who is passionate about fashion – one who ultimately decides that being a bad guy is much, much more fun than to be well-behaved, and thus, tepid.

That being said, someone seems to have really wished for Cruella to be a 2021 adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada (2006), but with a hint of those typical magical and extraordinary accents that are a must for Disney. The production even reached out to the 2006 feature’s screenwriter, and the similarities between the two stories’ structures are quite obvious. The first half of the film follows Estella (Emma Stone) before she takes on the guise of Cruella, as she ends up working for the Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson), a fashion genius and, equally so, a workplace tyrant. It’s hard not to compare this to the dynamics between Andy and Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, by observing the abusive expectations of perfection and other extremely rich lady-excentricities sported by the Baroness, who correctly guesses Estella’s talents and takes her under her wing as an assistant. Hell, even Mark Strong’s character, a butler-bodyguard-confidante of the Baroness, recalls Stanley Tucci.

In the second half, after Estella discovers the malefic nature of the Baronesse and is grasped by the burning need for revenge, turning, at last, into Cruella, the film seems to bank on another oft-met typology in recent Hollywood flicks, that of the negative character turned hero. In this sense, we can remind ourselves of Joker (2019, dir. Todd Phillips) or Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (2020, dir. Cathy Yan), two films which, when it comes to representing a so-called anti-hero, are still superior to Cruella. This is the exact moment when things take a pretty problematic turn in Craig Gillespie’s most recent feature. There are some limits when it comes to the degree of nuance that one can offer to a character that has already been established as malefic – you can try and search for justifications, you can analyze the precise moment they switched from one side to the other, but to humanize them to the point in which one can empathize with the said character and wish for them to succeed is quite a dangerous act for a Disney film.

Cruella’s character is generally presented as being sympathetical (even more so given that Emma Stone is sympathetical), even if she is, at times, questioned by her loyal childhood friends who are also her partners in crime, Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) – her soon-to-be lackeys we are already familiar with from her animated version. The two confess that they liked the older Estella better, and not this odious character, Cruella, but they finally end up accepting her the way she truly is. This new incarnation of the character is now a dog lover, because you can no longer wear fur in a Disney film, just as smoking is no longer an option – which is a great loss, given the fact that we no longer have a campy Cruella, with her iconic accessories: her coat and her cigarette holder. In the end, one can even pity Estella, since she’s a good and hard-working girl who has suffered many indignities: her mother is killed and her talents are exploited. On top of it all, there is the Baroness von Hellman, who is even more malefic, and so, any given act committed by Cruella, however immoral or extreme, comes across as justified. The new version of the character in the 101 Dalmatians (1996) also seems to have some pretty solid moral values; she doesn’t want to stoop so low as to kill someone, as the Baroness would, who is prepared to (literally) shove someone off a cliff at any given moment.

Most bizarrely, the 2021 Cruella (who, within the film, lives in the UK in the seventies) is a character that sets out to be against the system (and I wonder if a capitalist monster such as Disney has no sort of self-awareness in this regard), which the film seamlessly integrates into the era’s contemporary British counterculture scene. Cruella is not evil, she is just unconventional. Aside from her dresses meant for, let’s say, galas, in the second half of the film, Estella constantly sports boots, leather, chains, berets, and military-style jackets in predominantly black attire, and part of her “special” dresses seem to similarly emulate the look of the seventies counterculture – a dress made from newspaper pages, another one from garbage, another one – a parody of a uniform. Even though a fashion-show-turned-punk-concert due to a spotted à la Dalmatian coat, set to a cover of The Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog, is a cinematic moment that I never knew I would enjoy seeing, to relate a character who, in pop culture, is seen as the archetypal representation of evil and cruelty to the punk scene is a choice that is, at the very least, doubtful.

But, still, Cruella does have its good parts: it features two pretty solid performances in the lead roles by the two Emmas, and its little self-referential tributes to the previous films set in the 101 Dalmatians universe – remakes of certain shots and scenes, such as the one in which the dogs are compared to their owners, or the evildoer’s chaotic driving – are satisfactory elements for any nostalgic fan. In the end, it’s hard to honestly recommend this film as anything else than a light title to watch at the cinema or at home, and I think that one must watch it with a critical eye, as in the case of many other titles that Disney has recently released.

Dora Leu

Graduated with a BA in film directing and a MA in film studies from UNATC; she's also studied history of art. Also collaborates with the Acoperisul de Sticla film magazine and is a former coordinator of FILM MENU. She's dedicated herself to '60-'70s Japanese cinema and Irish post-punk music bands. Still keeps a picture of Leslie Cheung in her wallet.