Killer queen
Tale Of Tales | Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone gets Grimm.
Loosely adapted from the twisted tales of 17th Century Neapolitan poet Giambattista Basile – whose work inspired everyone from the Brothers Grimm to Walt Disney – Garrone’s portmanteau fantasy divides its attentions between three kingdoms. In Selvascura, Salma Hayek’s barren Queen sends her husband ( John C. Reilly) on a mission to kill an underwater beast; in Roccaforte, a crone (Shirley Henderson) is wooed by Vincent Cassel’s unwitting Casanova king; and in Altomonte, Princess Viola (Bebe Cave) demands to be married off to a courageous suitor while Toby Jones’s monarch raises a colossal flea.
Claiming “I like to put myself in trouble” Garrone opted to make the ambitious project his first English-language film, partly to attract the widest possible audience and partly to work with English-language actors he admired. But Garrone was also adamant that the film would retain its Mediterranean identity. “What’s very important for the movie is to not lose our roots. For an English movie with an international cast, I think the movie’s very Italian.”
In adapting a writer little-known outside his native Naples, but whose influence can be seen in every modern fantasy story, Garrone had the freedom to bottle the spirit of Basile’s stories without remaining rigorously faithful to the plots. “I love the way Basile moves from comic to dramatic; from grotesque to something that can
‘I like to put myself in trouble’
Matteo garrone “It’s a movie about women,” acclaimed Italian director Matteo Garrone tells Buzz just a few hours after the Cannes premiere of his barmy fantasy horror
Tale Of Tales. It’s also a movie about sea monsters, pet fleas and hula-hooping bears. Like we say, barmy.
be very pure and light,” Garrone enthuses. “It’s not like working with Pinocchio where everybody knows the story. The impact is much stronger because it’s much more unexpected. We put something of our imagination inside it, but the base, the soul, was from Basile.”
The only trouble came in deciding which of Basile’s 49 “Tales” to adapt – even a mere three proving a challenge to cram into one film. “It was quite difficult for us to shoot,” Garrone admits. “With Gomorrah we had the same problem – there were so many possibilities. It would be perfect for a television series.”
Unlike most fantasies, which go down the CG-heavy effects route, Garrone was keen to keep as much of his film practical as possible, likening the film’s air of artificiality to Méliès and Powell and Pressburger. But with Python-esque grotesquery and occasional nudity, it’s far from child friendly. So who is it for? “It’s important to say that it was not for kids, but in the 17th Century, there was no difference between kids and adults. It was for people – kid, adult, whatever. That’s why it’s so dark and sometimes almost horror.”
ETA | 17 June Tale Of Tales opens this summer.