Rui chose the original story by Madame Leprince de Beaumont, published in 1757 by Le Magazin des Enfants, because he considers it to be the most meaningful fairy tale. To reinforce the unconscious’ language he opted for doing the narration only with images. To do so, he carefully read the story, wrote down the details delineating a script for subsequent production of the images. The result gives us a privileged panorama of Rui’s plastic creation for expressing through visual elements the narrative that made its author famous.
The transformation of fear into love and the Beauty’s generosity, when she offers to stay with the Beast, in place of her father, and captivate him, are explicit in the strong lines and bright colors of the versatile artist. A theme common to other fairy tales has in Beauty and the Beast it most known version, suggesting the rites de passage, with all the obstacles they bear, and yet how love rescues man, liberating him from his animal load. The Beast is a being in evolution, and the Beauty helps him to find his humanity. That gradual humanization is shown in a subtle way through the claws that become hands.
Laura Sandroni in O GLOBO newspaper – (October 16, 1994)
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