Is there still a place in Hol­ly­wood for pup­pets and prac­ti­cal effects?

It doesn’t take long for Tale of Tales, Mat­teo Garrone’s fairy tale trip­tych, to make clear that this isn’t just anoth­er fan­ta­sy film. As John C Reilly’s King of Longtrel­lis is sent on a quest to slay a sea mon­ster, he doesn’t strap on glis­ten­ing armour in a quick-cut mon­tage or sail out into a whirling CGI storm.

Instead, he slow­ly wades under­wa­ter in an old-fash­ioned div­ing suit (pos­i­tive­ly futur­is­tic by the stan­dards of the oth­er­wise Baroque set­ting). Murky water obscures our view of the scene. The beast, when he finds it, is alabaster-white and fast asleep, threat­en­ing for how unset­tling­ly alien it appears rather than for the pres­ence of pix­el-per­fect fangs. The fight is brief but glacial. Lord of the Rings this isn’t.

Indeed, the films Tale of Tales most strong­ly evokes are the prac­ti­cal effects-heavy likes of Labyrinth and The Dark Crys­tal. Whether or not Gar­rone had this par­tic­u­lar strand of pup­pet-based fan­ta­sy in mind, this was cer­tain­ly part of the appeal of Tale of Tales to Toby Jones, who admits that he, ​“had a kind of con­cern about CGI,” but was reas­sured when, ​“rather beau­ti­ful pup­pets start­ed appear­ing on the set.” Jones’ King of High­hill devel­ops a child­ish obses­sion with a giant, mag­i­cal insect, and the actor fond­ly recalls, ​“watch­ing a pup­peteer lubri­cate and climb into the back­side of a mas­sive flea.”

It’s not pure­ly a ques­tion of aes­thet­ics – or pup­pets – though. The Princess Bride’s visu­als are most­ly ground­ed in tac­tile effects, even in the sur­pris­ing­ly real­is­tic ren­der­ing of a giant, car­niv­o­rous rodent. With its fairy tale book­ends and daft dia­logue (incon­ceiv­able!), it’s worlds apart from the po-faced fan­ta­sy we’re faced with today in the form of War­craft and oth­er whizzbang block­busters. Per­haps it’s that fairy tale ele­ment which is cru­cial. It is the lifeblood of Tale of Tales, and (gob­lins aside) the likes of Labyrinth share more DNA with the Broth­ers Grimm than they ever have with Tolkien. But this type of tale is unavoid­ably one Hol­ly­wood seems to have fall­en out of love with.

With Pan’s Labyrinth and the Hell­boy films, Guiller­mo del Toro proved there’s still room for vivid, weird fan­ta­sy film­mak­ing. Deeply strange and unapolo­get­i­cal­ly dark, his films take us to worlds far removed from our own, where unknown hor­rors lurk in every dark cor­ner. Tale of Tales steps into the same space, and much has been made of the film’s grotesque moments, most of all Salma Hayek rip­ping into a gar­gan­tu­an, still-beat­ing heart. These moments are shock­ing and pow­er­ful, but Gar­rone carves out his own dis­tinct ter­ri­to­ry in redis­cov­er­ing the qui­eter parts of this for­got­ten world.

“There’s one image in the film that real­ly sticks with me,” says Jones, ref­er­enc­ing the moment when an ogre strides out of a cas­tle, Bebe Cave’s princess slung over his shoul­der. In any oth­er film, ​“there’d be 900 Hol­ly­wood extras wav­ing pitch­forks.” Instead Gar­rone pits them alone against the impos­ing Ital­ian scenery. ​“There’s noth­ing else there,” Jones con­tin­ues. ​“It seems to belong to some mem­o­ry of what that land­scape should look like.”