Tale of Tales

He isn’t some­one with the same recog­ni­tion-fac­tor as the Broth­ers Grimm or Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen, but the 16^th-cen­tu­ry Neapoli­tan poet and col­lec­tor of folk tales Giambat­tista Basile pre­dat­ed both with his famous com­pendi­um, ​‘The Tale of Tales’. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, such cau­tion­ary nar­ra­tives have been con­fig­ured to turn young minds into well-behaved cit­i­zens – which is why the likes of Walt Dis­ney have been so attract­ed to them. But the stuff here, which Gomor­rah direc­tor Mat­teo Gar­rone has ded­i­cat­ed to his own kids, proves at times pro­found­ly, grotesque­ly strange.

In a trio of medieval monar­chies, var­i­ous roy­als dis­cov­er that absolute pow­er doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make life any eas­i­er. Take befud­dled ruler Toby Jones, whose teenage daugh­ter keeps bleat­ing on about mar­ry­ing a prince, when what he real­ly wants to do is get back to his pet flea – once a mere speck, now nour­ished so it’s the size of a small pony. Mean­while, across the bor­der, his majesty Vin­cent Cas­sel is mak­ing it his mis­sion to bed every one of his nubile young female sub­jects, until he’s refused by a gold­en-voiced peas­ant girl, who keeps him out of her hov­el because she’s actu­al­ly a wrinkly senior cit­i­zen busi­ly cal­cu­lat­ing how to turn the sit­u­a­tion to her advan­tage. Else­where, in a coun­try not so far away, queen Salma Hayek is won­der­ing whether she was right to fol­low the advice of the mys­te­ri­ous seer who told her roy­al hub­by (John C Reil­ly) that the best way to get her preg­nant was to kill a sea mon­ster and bring back its heart for her to eat.

The sight of the prim and grace­ful Hayek tear­ing into a hunk of offal she can bare­ly see beyond is just one of the mem­o­rable images in Garrone’s hand­some­ly assem­bled 2015 Cannes com­pe­ti­tion entry. Assort­ed her­itage loca­tions look the part as well, giv­ing the whole thing the lush, cap­ti­vat­ing qual­i­ty of a sto­ry­book brought to life. That in turn seems to have freed the cast to approach their roles with a cer­tain child-like glee, sport­ing a gen­er­ous array of assort­ed ruffs, dou­blet and hose. Cas­sel appears to be tak­ing the mick­ey out of him­self, John C Reil­ly plays it dead­pan know­ing the very sight of him in that clob­ber will make us smile – but then we’re smil­ing already at Toby Jones’ wide-eyed infat­u­a­tion with his new insect friend.

Curi­ous­ly, though, for all the nuggety good­ness, it’s as tale-telling that the film proves slight­ly under­whelm­ing, since the sundry fables all tend to peak a bit too ear­ly, and Garrone’s seem­ing­ly hap­haz­ard way of cut­ting between them doesn’t always make the best of their dra­mat­ic poten­tial. Slight­ly dis­ap­point­ing real­ly, leav­ing us with an exquis­ite­ly dec­o­rat­ed fol­ly which seems to lack a com­pelling rea­son why it’s telling these sto­ries and telling them now. Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni, for instance, returned to the ​‘Ara­bi­an Nights’ fables as a way of explor­ing lib­er­at­ed sex­u­al­i­ty, while William Goldman’s The Princess Bride main­tained that clas­sic fairy tales were a match for mod­ern Hol­ly­wood. But here? In the end, we’re real­ly none the wiser.