Review: Matteo Garrone's Entertaining But Fleeting 'Tale Of Tales' With Salma Hayek, John C. Reilly, Vincent Cassel, More

A film made of embroidered damask, blood, and the kind of magic one must suppress the urge to spell with a "k," Matteo Garrone's "Tale of Tales" marks an even greater sea change in approach than between his last two lauded, but wildly different titles: "Gomorrah" and "Reality." Based on the 17th century fairy stories of Giambattista Basile, which were simply the written-down versions of folktales that had existed for centuries prior, there is certainly a sense of age and ancient rot to the storytelling, as though this is just the latest time someone has whispered these weird tales of monsters and queens into another's ear, and the details will almost certainly be misheard and altered with the next airing. Just as a bell is not a bell until it's rung, these tales only really exist in the act of telling, and so Garrone's baroque, sumptuous take is, almost from conception, a grand folly, a lavish and painstaking attempt to set in stone, or carve in...