JUNE 4, 2023
GENRE: HORROR?
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)
I had a suspicion that “horror” being listed as a genre for Tale of Tales was a bit of a stretch, and I was correct. If the brief presence of a sea monster and the occasional act of violence is enough to consider it a horror film for you, then so be it – I’m not the genre police! (I was. But was killed three days before retirement.) No, like many of the fairy tales of old, this is just a pretty standard fantasy/morality tale, which means it gets dark at times but doesn’t quite qualify as a horror story. Indeed, when Vincent Cassel showed up I thought about Brotherhood of the Wolf, which also fits into several genres, and I feel even that would be closer to a horror film than this. Not a slight on it, just a bit of warning for anyone who might sit down with it!
But again, I figured as much going in anyway, which is important to note because my reasons for being mixed on the film have nothing to do with its genre. Even if it was an all out gore/scarefest, I think I’d still have the same opinion if director Matteo Garrone (who also co-wrote the script, all based on stories by Giambattista Bastile) took the same approach with his narrative. The film is basically an anthology with three stories, but for some reason he opted to intercut between them throughout the 2:20 runtime, which would be fine if there was some kind of connection between their events, but there isn’t. It’s not until the final scene that it’s even clear all three stories exist within the same universe, as we see characters from all three attending the same event, though they still don’t interact.
Weirder still, all three stories are about Kings, so they must all have very tiny kingdoms if they’re all invited to a coronation at the end. It actually adds to the lack of cohesion between the three stories; if two of the kings were changed into other royal/important figures of some sort, there would be opportunities for them to interact and maybe drift into one another’s stories like in Pulp Fiction or Trick ‘r Treat. But really, the whole thing could have worked so much better if Garrone just presented each tale from start to finish instead of cutting between them at random, with no clear strategy as to when he opted to go from one to the other. Sometimes we stay with one story for 20 minutes, other times it seems we only get a scene or two before going elsewhere. As a result it becomes harder and harder to get invested into any of their proceedings, because just when you get settled into one, he’ll go off to another and softly reset your attention.
At least the three tales are interesting/weird enough to be memorable. In one, Toby Jones is a king whose daughter is about to be of the age where she is old enough to be married off, but because he doesn’t actually want that to happen, he arranges a seemingly unwinnable contest for her hand: guessing what animal a skin came from. The “animal” is actually a pet flea that grew to be the size of a cow before it died, so there’s no reason to think anyone could guess it, right? Alas, an ogre figures it out and Jones honors his own rules, so off she goes and then naturally tries to escape the brute. It’s a very random story; even if it was presented fully intact without the other two cutting between it it would feel like two stories jammed together (the flea one and the ogre one), but it’s just so odd and Jones is always so fun to watch, it doesn’t really matter much. The oddness alone keeps it compelling.
Then there’s the most kind of typical one, in which another king (Cassel), who is perpetually horny, hears the sing-song voice of a townswoman on the streets below and becomes infatuated with finding her. But as it turns out, she’s kind of a crone looking older lady that would never catch his attention if he were to see her on the street, so she stays behind her locked door and won’t let him see her. He persists with his wooing, so she finally agrees to come to his bed but only at night with all the lights (candles) out so he can’t see her. He agrees, but sneaks a look and then becomes, as expected, repulsed by her appearance. So he has her tossed out the window, but she survives and is taken in by a witch, who makes her incredibly beautiful (she’s played by the knockout Stacy Martin from The Night House), at which point Cassel sees her and naturally doesn’t recognize her. It feels like it’s going to be a revenge sort of thing, but it goes in a different direction that results in one of the film’s most gruesome images (again, it’s got some violent moments). Unfortunately it feels like it lacks a true resolution, only kind of wrapping up in the film’s epilogue where everyone comes together (well, they’re all in the same spot – again, the characters never interact).
The other one is, I guess, the “main” story, since it seemingly takes up the most time and boasts two of the four names on the cover: Salma Hayek and John C. Reilly (Jones and Cassel are the others). It’s also the shaggiest and thus has the most damage done to it by the cross cutting, telling a story of yet another king (Reilly) whose queen (Hayek) is having trouble conceiving. He is told by a witch that if he kills a sea monster and then the queen eats its heart (if cooked by a virgin), they’ll have a child – and it works! Unfortunately, he also dies of his injuries from the fight (making Reilly’s appearance so short he might as well have gone unbilled), so Hayek has to raise the child on her own. But she barely seems to care about his death – she’s more troubled by the fact that the virginal cook also gives birth to an identical child, and the two grow up to be best buds/brothers, despite Hayek’s insistence that her son not play with the other boy. Eventually she drives the other one away, and her son resents her for it, and then... it just goes on and on, without any real drive to the proceedings, made worse by the intercutting that means it takes 15-20 minutes to get the next piece of its already drawn out story. The twist ending is more of a “Wait what?” than the knockout it’s supposed to be, and Hayek’s hatred of the other kid never really makes a lot of sense, so this one might not have worked even if it was kept intact. But hey, you get to see Salma Hayek devouring a bloody monster heart, and John C. Reilly dressed in an old diving suit that makes him look like the Bioshock guy, so it’s not all bad.
The lone feature on the disc (besides some trailers) is a making of that runs nearly an hour, and while it has some talking head stuff with the cast a lot of the time it’s just behind the scenes footage of key moments being shot sans any commentary, and the chatter before “action!” is often in French without subtitles, so it’s not clear what they’re discussing. I've certainly seen more involving documentaries, in other words, but maybe if you’re bilingual it’ll be of more interest. Kind of funny to see the little bucket next to Salma during the filming of the heart-eating scene, waiting for her to spit into just off camera as soon as they call “cut!”. There aren’t a lot of people on the planet who can look good performing either of these actions, so good on you, Ms. Hayek (sorry, Ms. Hayek Pinault). Ironically, the doc is more structured than the film – it covers the Hayek story, then the Cassel one, and then finally the Jones one, without going back to the others.
Few would deny that the film is lovely to look at it; between the cast and the costumes and the production design, it’s all top notch and looks like it cost a lot more than its reported $14 million budget. But the strange presentation that leaves all three stories feeling like they aren’t properly resolved, not to mention having their narrative thrust constantly weakened, makes it a hard film to recommend with regards to how invested you can get into its proceedings, which is a lot to ask when it’s nearly 2.5 hours long. I’d be curious to see someone recut it to be three standalone tales, because then you could just watch one “episode” at a time if you wanted, instead of investing a not insignificant chunk of your waking day to it. And then you might also spend less time wondering if that’s actually the way it was meant to be, only for Garrone (or perhaps one of his producers) to watch Game of Thrones one night during an editing break and feel the film could work the way that show did, jumping across multiple stories with people who didn’t even know each other. But it didn’t even always work great there, and they had eight seasons to work out the kinks! But again: very nice looking film.
What say you?
P.S. This was a "pile" movie, having been there for over six years (!), but those reviews are supposed to be shorter and this one turned out a little long. Plus I always feel bad seeing so many "FTPs" on the main page.
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