Review: Tale of Tales

A king who dotes upon a flea. An old woman who tricks a monarch into believing her young and beautiful. A queen who eats the heart of a sea monster to become pregnant. These are some of the characters who figure in director Matteo Garrone's lush and imaginative adaptation of Giambattista Basile's fairy tales.

The Brothers Grimm were ardent admirers of the early 17th century Neapolitan's works, and it's not hard to see why. Basile trafficked in the bizarre, bloody and darkly comic and many of his tales served as touchstones and even foundations for the stories spun by The Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and even the more sanitised tellings upon which Walt Disney built the fortunes of his magic kingdom. It may be peculiar that Garrone opted out of filming the tales from Basile's Pentamerone in their native language, but it is a smart strategy as the casting of such stars as Salma Hayek and Vincent Cassel assists in expanding the film beyond European waters.

Garrone employs an interwoven structure, shuttling back and forth between three stories. The first, based on La Cerva Fatata (The Enchanted Doe) concerns a childless King and Queen (John C. Reilly and Hayek). They are visited by a mysterious figure (Franco Pistoni) who promises that the Queen can become pregnant if they can slay a sea monster and have its heart cooked by a virgin for the Queen to consume. However, the figure warns, a new life comes at the sacrifice of another. Indeed, the devoted King dies in killing the monster but the Queen at last gets her heart's desire. She gives birth to a son but so does the virgin, and the identical twin boys (Christian and Jonah Lees) - one a prince, the other a servant - become inseparable friends much to the Queen's displeasure.

In a neighbouring kingdom, a petulant princess (Bebe Cave) wishes her father (Toby Jones) would place more focus in securing her a husband. The king has more important matters on his mind, namely caring for a flea who returns his affections. This story, from La Pulce (The Flea), veers in surprisingly absurd directions, with the flea becoming indirectly responsible for the princess being wedded to an ogre (Guillaume Delaunay), a beast that decidedly does not turn into a prince.

La Vecchia Scorticata (The Flayed Old Lady) is the basis for the third and arguably most affecting tale. A lusty king (Vincent Cassel) hears the sweet singing of a woman in the distance and, surmising she must be as angelic in looks as she is in voice, resolves to have her. The voice, unbeknownst to him, belongs to an elderly crone (Hayley Carmichael) who, despite her equally wrinkly sister's (Shirley Henderson) protestations, arranges to meet the king under conditional cover of darkness. The consequences of her scheme prove more tragic for her sister, the final image of whom is both morbid and poignant.

The sisters' segment not-so-subtly touches upon the still existing obsession with eternal youth and beauty and the extreme lengths taken for their preservation, but all the stories share a darker morality. Comeuppances are self-inflicted. If endings are happy, then much suffering was endured. Yet lessons learned are not the primary intent of either Basile or Garrone. Entertainment is, and Tale of Tales succeeds on that count. This is an immersive, ribald, and unwholesome portmanteau film, brimming with the macabre and the fantastical. Its emblematic image may be that of Hayek's blood-smeared face as she determinedly devours the monster's heart in her all-white dining room.

Striking images abound: a lissome Stacy Martin as a transmogrified beauty, her long tresses covering her pale nakedness, as she lies sprawled on a red sheet in the middle of the forest; Reilly's King in a diving suit straight out of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; the twin boys swimming underwater, their albino appearance rendering them like water nymphs; the weirdly tender embrace the king bestows upon a now-engorged flea.

Tale of Tales

Directed by: Matteo Garrone

Written by: Edoardo Albinati, Udo Chiti, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso; adapted from Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone

Starring: Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, John C. Reilly, Shirley Henderson, Hayley Carmichael, Bebe Cave, Stacy Martin, Christian Lees, Jonah Lees, Franco Pistoni, Guillaume Delaunay, Alba Rohrwacher