Snow Queen
Year of release : 2002
Run time : 3h
Genre : Fantasy / Adventure / Mini Series
Cast : Bridget Fonda
The 2 part Hallmark tv movie is based on the Hans Christian Andersen 1844 fairy tale “The Snow Queen”.
Gerda lives a happy life with her family at their family owned hotel. One winter day, her mother rides her horse to the forest, and the Snow Queen sends her wind to scare the horse and she dies.
Nine years later, her father is still unconsolable, and Gerda is an 18 year old young beautiful woman.
Kai is hired by her father at the hotel as the bellboy. When her father asks why wasn’t he there the day before, when he was supposed to, he tells him he had to walk all the way to the hotel, as he had no money. Gerda’s father doesn’t seem to like him, because Kai is always happy, smiling all the time.
Kai falls in love with Gerda the moment he sees her, and after a while of working there, they befriend. They start going out, and he teaches her how to ice skate, although Gerda told him she hates winter (because her mother died and her father lost his joy of living, in winter, and she thinks winter responsible for it. She might be right.).
One night, Gerda thinks she sees the Snow Queen by Kai’s window, but then she wakes up and it seems it was just a dream.
One night, when they’re skating on the ice lake, the Snow Queen sends her frozen wind, and Kai gets something in his eye which makes him turn mean (to her and to other people).
Gerda doesn’t know what she did for him to stop talking to her, and when he does, to say mean things.
One night, the Snow Queen visits the hotel when it’s been snowing for days, the roads being closed. When Kai is being sent to her room with the ice water she requested, she asks him if anyone changed after the blizzard from a month ago. She tells him she knows why he’s become selfish and mean, and that they should meet the following night on the lake.
That following evening is Gerda’s 18th birthday party, and she tells Kai that she’ll never forgive him if he’s not gonna attend. Kai apologizes for the way he’s been for the past month.
The Snow Queen almost hypnotizes Kai into leaving with her, but when he sees Gerda he snaps out of it. He goes and buys the boots Gerda liked, for her, as a birthday gift, and when he enters the party, he hears the queen’s call.
Gerda goes looking for him ,and finds the mirror broken by the queen, and the boots Kai bought for her, with the note “Help me”.
Kai fights a man for his sleigh, and goes after the queen who is leaving.
The queen tells him he wants something from her, but he doesn’t know what it is, again, and kisses him, telling him that’s what it is.
Winter passed, and Spring arrived. Gerda is sure the woman who stayed at their hotel the night before Kai disappeared took him with her. Her father’s memory of her arriving was erased, and Gerda is alone in it, as her father doesn’t like him now due to how he treated her the month before his disappearance.
Minna, her friend and father’s employee, tells her there’s been unexplained things happening in the past years, that they’re afraid to look into. That young men, Kai’s age (Kai is 18), have been disappearing from the villages around. People think they’ve been abducted by the Snow Queen.
Gerda can’t live without him, and standing on the bridge on a river, she asks to have Kai back, offering the boots from him that she loves so much. She throws them in the water, and then jumps, saying she’s offering herself for Kai.
She drifts in the water ,and wakes up in Spring’s land. Spring is trying to hypnotize her by telling her all the time she’s sleepy, to keep her there forever, so her season will never end.
After a while, Gerda finds notes she hid around her room about how she doesn’t belong there, and runs away. She is being chased by Spring’s guards, and ends up in Summer’s land.
Summer wants to keep her there forever too, so her reign will never end, so she’s trying to get her married throwing a ball with eligible men.
Kai wakes up in the queen’s frozen castle. The queen tells him he needs to put together her magic mirror broken to pieces. Kai tells her it’s too cold for him in her frozen castle, and he needs at least a fire, but the queen doesn’t agree. She freezes his hands to make him comply, telling him she’ll release him after he fixed her mirror.
Devastated Gerda disappeared too, her father closes the hotel, and becomes a reclusive man.
I personally didn’t enjoy the movie that much, it honestly bored me, a feeling it gave me the first time I watched it, 20 years ago, too.
I didn’t quite like the costumes. I think they could have made really beautiful costumes for the Snow Queen, and the Summer sister (I didn’t like their outfits, they looked cheap).
The acting was so and so. The scenes in which Gerda’s father plays the clarinet are ridiculous.
The soundtrack didn’t match what was on the screen. There’s certain climactic scenes in which the music is the opposite of what they’re showing us. It seemed to me the soundtrack consisted of Irish music, although it’s a Danish story.
I guess the visuals were fine for that time.
The series received a Saturn Award nomination, and a few other nominations.
You can watch the full movie for free, if you follow this link :
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8joav2
part 2 : https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8joavb
Rating : Could have been a contender !