Tale of Tales [Il racconto dei racconti] **** (2015, Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, John C Reilly, Shirley Henderson) – Movie Review

Co-writer/director Matteo Garrone’s ravishing and often-exhilarating English-language début brilliantly interweaves three Grimm-style adult fairy tales of kings and queens – and monsters!

(1) Salma Hayek plays the Queen of Longtrellis who forfeits the life of her husband the King (John C Reilly) to have a baby and pays a terrible price when 16 years later she finds her adored albino son Elias (Christian Lees) turns out to have an identical twin best friend, Jonah (Jonah Lees)…

(2) Vincent Cassel plays another king, the King of Strongcliff, who, searching to make love to a young woman he thinks he sees, finds instead that his passion is stoked by two mysterious old sisters, Imma (Shirley Henderson) and Dora (Hayley Carmichael)…

and (3) Toby Jones plays a third king, the King of Highhills, who gives his daughter Violet (Bebe Cave) in marriage to an ogre, with terrible consequences. 

Garrone lets his imagination run riot and the movie is astounding on every level. The acting is marvellous under quite difficult circumstances, with Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones all outstanding, but it’s the production designs (Dimitri Capuani), costume designs (Massimo Cantini Parrini) cinematography (Peter Suschitzky), locations and score (Alexandre Desplat) that everyone will praise and remember. This movie really is a big fat wow in every department.

Garrone co-wrote the screenplay from the book by Giambattista Basile. For anyone who likes stories and plotting this is a marvel on this level too. It has bookends in which Alba Rohrwacher and Massimo Ceccherini play street circus owners.

Garrone made the very different Gomorrah in 2008.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/

Jonah Lees

Christian Lees