Review: Tale of Tales


The Queen of Selvascura (Salma Hayek) longs to have a child, but has thus far proven unsuccessful. She is told by a soothsayer-type that if her husband The King (John C. Reilly) slays a sea dragon, she will be with child. After the deed is done, the King dies, but The Queen does indeed fall pregnant, as does a servant girl. Sixteen years later and the two blond-haired boys grow up the best of friends, much to the Queen’s displeasure. The second story has a randy King (Vincent Cassel, who else?) who falls for the enchanting voice he hears coming from a window. Not seeing the songbird’s face he is eventually mortified to find that it belongs to an old woman. In the third story, The King of Altomonte (Toby Jones) becomes obsessed with a flea, keeping it as a pet and even feeding it until the point where it grows to dog-size (!). It dies though, and The King is heart-broken. Meanwhile, his lonely daughter Viola (Bebe Cave) is of marrying age, and The King reluctantly offers her hand in marriage to anyone who can identify the species that the oversized hide of his beloved dead pet. Horrifyingly, a brutish ogre is the only one who guesses correctly, and The King regrettably must offer up his daughter to the ogre, most distressingly for poor Viola.

 

Bizarre but not entirely successful fantasy flick from director/co-writer Matteo Garrone (The popular crime flick “Gomorrah”) has its moments. It’s a very, very strange film and on occasion that strangeness is intriguing or at least amusing. Mostly it’s just strange, though and I’m not sure whether any or all of this was meant with tongue-in-cheek. I certainly hope the visage of John C. Reilly in full armour, sword and a diving helmet trying to slay a sea monster was meant to be silly. ‘Coz it sure as fuck is. That scene is horrendously and murkily shot by veteran cinematographer Peter Suschitzky (“The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, “The Empire Strikes Back”, “After Earth”), though the film is otherwise really quite gorgeous and colourful. Art direction and costuming are both top-notch. Out of the cast an hilarious Vincent Cassel and wormy little Toby Jones fare best (the story involving the latter is by far the most interesting), whilst Salma Hayek isn’t terribly comfortably cast. The best thing in the entire film is the music score by Alexandre Desplat (“The Ghost Writer”, “The Monuments Men”, “Godzilla”), which is terrific.

 

Some of you will get this dark fairytale oddity, I can’t say I entirely did, but there are moments of amusing strangeness. I just felt like there wasn’t much in the way of an overall point to the stories individually or collectively. If they were morality tales, I’m not entirely convinced Jones’ peculiar king was all that bad of a chap, just foolish and misguided. Was the point that rich people are kind of selfish? ‘Coz that’s a bit pissweak and clichéd. Based on a 17th century book by Giambattista Basile, the screenplay is by Massimo Gaudioso, Eduardo Albinati, Ugo Chiti, and the director.

 

Rating: C+

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