Tale of Tales

I vividly remember the first time I saw the poster for Tale of Tales. It was Salma Hayek Pinault—decked out in heavy, cavernous velvet—hunched over a massive, dripping organ that looked suspiciously like a dinosaur’s heart. I watched this movie for the first time on a rainy Tuesday while eating a bowl of lukewarm spaghetti, and let me tell you, trying to twirl noodles while watching a Queen go to town on a giant, rubbery sea-beast heart is a specific kind of cognitive dissonance I highly recommend.

Released in 2015, right as the Marvel Cinematic Universe was busy turning every mythological figure into a quippy action hero, Matteo Garrone (the man behind the brutal crime epic Gomorrah) decided to go in the opposite direction. He went backward—all the way back to the 17th-century Neapolitan stories of Giambattista Basile. These aren't the sanitized, "happily ever after" stories we’ve been fed by decades of animation. These are tales of obsession, skin-flaying, and giant fleas. It’s the kind of cinema that feels like it was unearthed from a damp cellar rather than rendered on a computer.

A Triptych of Terror and Texture

The film is an anthology, weaving together three stories in neighboring kingdoms. We have a Queen (Salma Hayek Pinault) so desperate for a child she’ll eat monster meat cooked by a virgin; a King (Vincent Cassel) whose lust leads him to a mysterious voice that belongs to someone much older than he realizes; and a King (Toby Jones) who becomes so obsessed with a giant pet flea that he accidentally marries his daughter off to a mountain-dwelling ogre.

What’s striking about watching this now, in our era of "prestige" streaming fantasy, is how tangible everything feels. Matteo Garrone leans heavily on practical effects and stunning Italian locations. When you see a giant sea monster, it’s not a weightless CGI blur; it’s a physical presence that looks like it has a smell. It’s a movie that values the "gross-out" as much as the "grand-out." There is a sequence involving one of the sisters trying to "renew" her youth by literally asking someone to skin her, and the tension is more effective than any jump scare I’ve seen in a decade. It’s body horror dressed in royal silk.

Performances that Bleed

The cast is doing some of their weirdest, most committed work here. Toby Jones is heartbreakingly pathetic as the King of Highhills. His obsession with the flea isn't played for laughs; it’s played as a genuine, tragic fixation that blinds him to his daughter’s suffering. Bebe Cave, who plays his daughter Violet, is the real MVP. She goes from a naive princess to a hardened survivor in a way that feels earned, particularly during a grueling escape sequence across a tightrope.

Then there’s Vincent Cassel. He’s essentially playing a caricature of toxic desire, but he brings such a feral energy to the King of Strongcliff that you can’t look away. He’s the guy who makes a mid-life crisis look like a literal curse from a witch. Watching him interact with Shirley Henderson and Hayley Carmichael (who play the two elderly sisters) is a masterclass in uncomfortable chemistry. The film manages to be contemporary in its themes—the vanity of aging, the suffocating nature of helicopter parenting—while looking like a Caravaggio painting come to life.

The Beauty of the Bizarre

I’ve often thought about why Tale of Tales didn't become a massive crossover hit. It’s likely because it refuses to play by the rules of modern blockbuster pacing. It’s slow, deliberate, and deeply cynical. It doesn't offer a "hero’s journey" so much as a "victim’s survival guide." In 2015, audiences were looking for the next Game of Thrones; instead, they got a baroque fever dream that was too weird for the mainstream and too bloody for the art-house crowd.

But for me, that’s its superpower. It’s an "oddity" in the best sense of the word. The score by Alexandre Desplat (The Shape of Water, The Grand Budapest Hotel) is haunting and ethereal, grounding the madness in a sense of timelessness. Apparently, during the filming of the heart-eating scene, Salma Hayek Pinault’s daughter was on set and actually thought her mother was choking because the "heart" (made of pasta and marzipan) was so difficult to chew. That level of physical commitment is all over the screen. This isn't just a movie you watch; it's a movie you feel in your teeth.

Tale of Tales is a gorgeous, grotesque reminder of what fantasy looked like before it was "Disney-fied." It’s a film about the price we pay for our deepest desires, and it doesn't offer any easy exits. If you’re tired of the same three-act structure and the same shiny pixels, dive into this one. Just maybe skip the spaghetti while you’re watching the heart scene. Or don't—I’m not your King.