Penelope

After a patrician lout knocks up his serving-girl lover and is coerced by his family into not doing the noble thing, her witchy mother lays a curse on the bloodline of the family. From now on, the females will bear the snout of a pig until they earn “the love of one of their own.” Flash forward past five generations of male heirs, and finally the curse finds a target: young and otherwise beautiful Penelope (Christina Ricci). The horrified parents sequester her while they surreptitiously troll for the proper suitor who may lift the curse. Suitors come, suitors run screaming. Eventually the media picks up on the story and does what the media does best with exploitable material. In due course, a threadbare aristocrat (James McAvoy) is sent in as a Trojan suitor to score photographic evidence of the hideous creature. The narrative and direction is uneven, but the cast manages to charm its way around the rough edges. The two leads make for a nice couple, the subtext goes down smoothly enough and Ricci has the perfect eyes for spending most of the movie with her snout concealed.