Tale of Tales - Review

All fiction is fantasy. No, really; every movie, regardless of genre, is an invitation to use our imaginations, and every movie takes that suspension of disbelief and runs with it in different ways. Just because a film might ostensibly fall under the label ‘fantasy’ doesn’t mean that the realm it creates is any less fictional, and just because a film happens to include ogres, sea-monsters and magic spells doesn’t mean it’s any less real. Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales – quite literally a world away from the drab brutality of his 2008 crime flick Gomorrah, and populated by a cast picked perfectly for their faces and individual merits – uses the veil of mythic kingdoms to seed some timeless ideals about parenthood, family, and growing old, and serves it up on a silver platter next to the giant, still-beating heart of a sea-monster.