Much like the albino sea monster of the prologue, this movie is a strange beast.
It's a fantasy film, whereas today Italian cinema is dominated by comedies and dramas: horrors and thrillers are rare and generally direct-to-video stuff, while sci-fi and fantasy are almost nonexistent. It has the naive storytelling of fairy tales (it comes in fact from "Lo cunto de li cunti", a 17th century collection of fairy tales), where things happen "just 'cause" (like a king giving his daughter in marriage to the first who can solve a riddle), but features violence, nudity, explicit sex and implied rape, which make it inappropriate for children.
Il Racconto dei Racconti follows three unrelated story lines; they do happen in the same narrative universe but never intertwine in a meaningful way.
In the first, a mature queen (Salma Hayek) gets pregnant through magic but so does one of her servants; when the two boys grow up they develop a unique bond. In the second, a debauched king (Vincent Cassell) tries to seduce a sweet-voiced woman seen from afar, who turns out to be an ugly crone. In the third, an eccentric monarch (Toby Jones) marries his daughter to an ogre. Obsession is the common theme here - how it destroys the protagonists' lives and drives away their loved ones.
Director Garrone elevates the movie with a fine eye for colors and composition, crafting some neat Gothic vignettes: a salamander-like monster lying in murky waters, a queen eating a giant red heart in her pristine white room, a bat-like creature swirling in a cave, a young woman draped in red sleeping in the underbrush of a lush green forest. The visuals are reminiscent of Neil Jordan or Tim Burton. Composer Desplat provides a moody, dream-like soundtrack.
Don't expect the Machiavellian politics of Game of Thrones or the sweeping epic of The Lord of the Rings: this is a different kind of fantasy, bare-bones simple in plot and structure but mature in tone.
6,5/10
It's a fantasy film, whereas today Italian cinema is dominated by comedies and dramas: horrors and thrillers are rare and generally direct-to-video stuff, while sci-fi and fantasy are almost nonexistent. It has the naive storytelling of fairy tales (it comes in fact from "Lo cunto de li cunti", a 17th century collection of fairy tales), where things happen "just 'cause" (like a king giving his daughter in marriage to the first who can solve a riddle), but features violence, nudity, explicit sex and implied rape, which make it inappropriate for children.
Il Racconto dei Racconti follows three unrelated story lines; they do happen in the same narrative universe but never intertwine in a meaningful way.
In the first, a mature queen (Salma Hayek) gets pregnant through magic but so does one of her servants; when the two boys grow up they develop a unique bond. In the second, a debauched king (Vincent Cassell) tries to seduce a sweet-voiced woman seen from afar, who turns out to be an ugly crone. In the third, an eccentric monarch (Toby Jones) marries his daughter to an ogre. Obsession is the common theme here - how it destroys the protagonists' lives and drives away their loved ones.
Director Garrone elevates the movie with a fine eye for colors and composition, crafting some neat Gothic vignettes: a salamander-like monster lying in murky waters, a queen eating a giant red heart in her pristine white room, a bat-like creature swirling in a cave, a young woman draped in red sleeping in the underbrush of a lush green forest. The visuals are reminiscent of Neil Jordan or Tim Burton. Composer Desplat provides a moody, dream-like soundtrack.
Don't expect the Machiavellian politics of Game of Thrones or the sweeping epic of The Lord of the Rings: this is a different kind of fantasy, bare-bones simple in plot and structure but mature in tone.
6,5/10