Some strange tales

An aquatic dragon. A monstrous flea. An ogre. Witches. Twin albinos born to different mothers. Kings and queens. A necromancer.

These are just a few of the characters in the visual feast that is Tale of Tales, a fantasy-horror film based on the stories of Giambattista Basile. They were published in the Pentamerone, a 17th century collection of fairy tales that ostensibly served to inspire the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen with the earliest versions of such well-known fables as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel.

This is not your mother’s Cinderella, let me tell you that.

Here, the family-friendly factor of these childhood bedtime stories is replaced with violence and grotesquerie and many other highly adult matters. This movie is not rated ‘G.’ It is capital-m Mature for sure.

As a side note, the Alberta Film Classification Board has not yet given this one a rating. I would peg it at ‘14A’ at the least when compared with others in that category although I would, if I could, always give an automatic ‘18A’ to any film that has blood and suffering. There’s sex and murder in this gothic/baroque trip through Mondo Bizarro.

Even Metro Cinema advertises this as “fairy tales that your parents would not want you to see.” Take heed but if you’re not dissuaded and are familiar with the works of other visualists such as Peter Greenaway, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Tarsem Singh, and Terry Gilliam among others then you’ve probably got a baseline of experience for what you’re getting into.

This movie revolves around three loosely connected tales from the Pentamerone. The first features Salma Hayek and John C. Reilly as the Queen and King of Longtrellis. She is desperate to have a baby but she is barren. A sorceress tells her to eat the heart of a dragon to become pregnant, but doing so will also result in the death of another. She is successful in her quest and bears a boy, but so does the cook who prepared the meal. The two children are identical and grow up to be incredibly close friends, much to the queen’s chagrin. Life sure is complicated and gets even more so before this tale is over.

Then there’s the story of the flea. Princess Violet (Bebe Cave) is devoted to her father, King of Highhills (Toby Jones) but cannot win his affection. While singing for him in front of all the court, he doesn’t even notice her, instead turning his attention to a flea, a creature that he eventually raises to gargantuan proportions. He loves the bug but neglects his daughter, eventually marrying her off to an ogre. The story doesn’t end there but Violet sure does learn self-reliance by the end.

We finish with a tale about the lustful King of Strongcliff (Vincent Cassel) whose passions lead to his downfall. He becomes smitten with the beautiful singing voice of an unseen woman, who turns out to be much older than he would have guessed. He would have disregarded her by sight if he had only seen her first before they got into bed together. The world works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it?

I was enthralled by director Matteo Garrone’s take on these stories but even more taken by Basile’s strange fairy tales. As a child, I had the book of Struwwelpeter on my shelf and haunting my dreams. I imagine that the Pentamerone would be an excellent companion to it.