The Red Shoes is an adaptation of a fable of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, but it's so much more than that. Where the original story is a parable warning against vanity the film interprets the story to be about the perils of artistic obsession. The film is also metafictional, as it centers an ballet director attempting to adapt a story into a dance while itself being an adaptation of that same story.

I think the most fascinating…

"We must crucify the evil within us, or else there is no salvation."
"I need no salvation."

I appreciate this movie much more upon re-watch. When I first watched it there was ambivalence I felt at what I saw as the portrayal of the relationship of a victim with her abuser, and what I interpreted as a story about a woman feeling the moral obligation to sacrifice and re-victimize herself to a man who groomed and abused her, stripping her…