Tale of Tales – first look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Tale of Tales – first look review

13 May 2015

Words by David Jenkins

Elaborate portrait of a person wearing black clothing and elaborate headpiece, sitting at a table with an ornate plate in front of them.
Elaborate portrait of a person wearing black clothing and elaborate headpiece, sitting at a table with an ornate plate in front of them.
Salma Hayek chows down on sea mon­ster heart in Mat­teo Garrone’s riotous fan­ta­sy triptych.

Obvi­ous­ly this the­o­ry will con­tain its aber­ra­tions, but gen­er­al­ly, if you’re able to watch a movie dur­ing which the ques­tion, how in the name of Leslie frickin’ Nielsen did this get made?” pops into your head on more than one occa­sion, then you know you’re on to some sort of winner.

The pro­duc­er cred­it of Brit mav­er­ick Jere­my Thomas goes a lit­tle way to explain­ing the exis­tence of Mat­teo Garrone’s glo­ri­ous mon­stros­i­ty, Tale of Tales, but there remains long stretch­es where the feel­ing of being in the pres­ence of a resplen­dent cin­e­mat­ic UFO remains.

Extrap­o­lat­ed from a trio of fan­tas­ti­cal folk tales by 17th cen­tu­ry Neapoli­tan poet Giambat­tista Basile, the film comes across as a gaudy, bawdy descen­dent to Pier Pao­lo Pasolini’s tril­o­gy of life (which was based on the work of Chaucer), par­tic­u­lar­ly in the way it explores the often eccen­tric ways in which humans derive hap­pi­ness from the world.

Though the sub­jects on show include swad­dling par­ents, unbri­dled van­i­ty, the spir­i­tu­al bond between sib­lings and the social divide between rich and poor, Tale of Tales is an all inclu­sive fea­ture, open­ing its bejew­elled arms to sea mon­sters, killer giant bats, ogres, fire breathers, shape-shift­ing witch­es and even a house-trained flea with gigantism.

Though the tales them­selves sit tri­umphant­ly with­in the realm of high fan­ta­sy – all are insti­gat­ed with the help of a high­ly metaphor­i­cal work of mag­ic – their mean­ing is always lucid and high­ly pre­scient. Yet, unlike Garrone’s pre­vi­ous fea­ture, Real­i­ty, which also pre­miered in the Cannes com­pe­ti­tion, Tale of Tales nev­er feels like it’s par­celling out moral lessons or offer­ing a blun­der­buss social com­men­tary. The tonal­ly unadorned mate­r­i­al is offered up for the view­er to men­tal­ly unbox in any way he/​she sees fit.

Per­haps it’s a satire on the absurd whims of lead­ers (rep­re­sent­ed by roy­al­ty here) to rule with a sense of cogent diplo­ma­cy? Maybe these are three essays on dif­fer­ent ways of express­ing love to anoth­er? They could be about search­ing for sub­lime con­tent­ment through mak­ing large, poten­tial­ly life-alter­ing phys­i­cal sac­ri­fices, as seen ear­ly on when John C Reilly’s sto­ical monarch dons his antique div­ing hel­met in order to source a sea monster’s heart for his beloved queen (Salma Hayek) so that she might become preg­nant. They could well be none of the above.

The self-inter­est of the aris­toc­ra­cy could be iden­ti­fied as the theme which unites these dis­parate vignettes, though Gar­rone sees fit not to undu­ly enno­ble the oppos­ing under­class­es and under­lings who often bare the brunt of regal igno­rance. No char­ac­ter in this equal-oppor­tu­ni­ties film fits clean­ly into a cat­e­go­ry of good or evil – every­one has their flaws, every­one has their frag­ile side. Toby Jones’ daffy king neglects his bored daugh­ter due to ded­i­cat­ing much of his time and ener­gy on bring­ing up a ami­able flea. And while his mild mania does have an amus­ing ring to it (though is nev­er played for broad laughs), you do see a man with an awful void in his life which he’s des­per­ate to fill.

The prime joy of this movie is its episod­ic ded­i­ca­tion to sur­prise, where it devel­ops its own inim­itable inter­nal log­ic with­in the first few scenes, yet keeps on rais­ing the wacky bar as the run­time can­ters on. And it is sur­prise, not just ran­dom images and digres­sions thrown in the pot to raise a cheap titter.

You can tell this by the immac­u­late detail of its pro­duc­tion design, the care­ful fram­ing and chore­og­ra­phy of its shots (exact­ing with­out feel­ing showy or over­ly stud­ied) and its over­all tone of pres­tige lit­er­ary baroque. It builds a world which sits at a mod­est but cal­cu­lat­ed remove from his­tor­i­cal and tem­po­ral real­i­ty, and is all the more bold and beau­ti­ful for it.

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