Salma Hayek as the Queen of Longtrellis
Tale of Tales is a 2015 dark fantasy film based on the Pentamerone
, a collection of fairytales written by 17th century poet Giambattista Basile. It features an All-Star Cast, with Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, and John C. Reilly having top billing. It is director Matteo Garrone's first English-speaking film.
Not to be confused with the Russian animated short of the same name.
This Film provides examples of:
- Anachronism Stew: The King of Longtrellis goes underwater to slay the aquatic dragon wearing a diving suit, which while having some prototypes made in the 1600s, didn't quite resemble the 1800s "hard-hat" suit he wears, which also lacks an oxygen hose.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Violet's wonderful crowning ceremony as Queen of Highhill; all the other royal characters from Strongcliff and Longtrellis intervene to pay their respects.
- Bat Out of Hell: In the climax of The Enchanted Doe plotline, Elias and Jonah get attacked by a monstrous man-sized bat creature which turns out to be the One-Winged Angel form of the Queen.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The necromancer explains to the Queen of Longtrellis that Elias and Jonah are truly inseparable, and that her violent desire to kill Jonah can be achieved only through violence. She accepts to go through with anything, and ends up getting transformed into a bat-like abomination.
- Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: When Violet comes back to Highhill she still wears the dress she had on the day she was married off to the ogre, now tattered and blood-splattered as she has just slaughtered her ogre husband.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Zigzagged with the king's giant flea. It looks a little intimidating, but behaves very quiet and docile.
- Book Ends: The film opens and closes on circus performances.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: The King of Highhill, played by Toby Jones. He appeared to be a little off long before meeting that flea.
- Darker and Edgier: Yes, the original tales were not aimed at children, but also were much more whimsical and light-hearted, and also not as explicit in their violence and sexuality aspect as the movie is. The original ending of "The Flayed Old Lady" (one of the tales adapted by this movie) was intended to be darkly humorous while here is Played for Horror. As it is mentioned in Death By Adaptation (see below) the circus performers who rescue Violet are gruesomely killed by the ogre in a sequence which almost seems taken from a Slasher Horror film.
- Damsel out of Distress: In the end, Violet has to rescue herself, and does she ever.
- Death by Adaptation: In the source material the circus performers manage to rescue Violet. Here instead they are gruesomely killed by the ogre, who is in turn killed by Violet herself.
- Didn't Think This Through: Just to get rid of her sister trying to know the secret of her beauty for a moment, in a sarcastic outburst Dora tells Imma that she [Dora] got herself flayed. Imma takes it at face value and gets an unscrupulous man to flay her alive.
- Easily Forgiven: Upset because of the Bed Trick, the King of Strongcliff has his guards throw Dora out of the castle window. As soon as Dora miraculously regains her youth and beauty, she meets the King in the woods and the two are soon betrothed, apparently without issue on her part about the attempted murder.
- Eye of Newt: The queen of Longtrellis needs to eat a sea monster's heart cooked by a virgin in order to have a child.
- Evil Red Head: When Dora is rejuvenated by a generous witch she becomes an attractive red haired maiden, and she cuts all ties with her sister Imma and lies to her about the way she got younger which leads to Imma skinning herself.
- Hero of Another Story: After leaving the kingdom due to the queen's attempted murder of him, Jonah settles down in another village for at least a few months. Elias arrives and, upon being mistaken for Jonah, receives an extremely warm welcome of everyone coming out to hug him, with one young woman implied to be Jonah's lover.
- I Am a Humanitarian: Some of the bones in the ogre's lair are human. In the source material he is explicitly described as a cannibal.
- Identical Stranger: Elias and Jonah. Amazing, seeing as how they both have unnaturally white hair and eyebrows. They're actually related through magic, though it's unclear if anyone involved realizes this. You'd think they couldn't help but notice, though.
- Implacable Man: The Ogre survives his apparent Disney Villain Death during Violet's rescue and catches up to murder the heroic circus troupe with the fury of a Slasher Movie villain.
- Impossible Task: The King of Highhills promises his daughter to whoever can guess what animal the giant flea's hide is from, expecting that no-one will be able to guess such a crazy answer.
- Jabba Table Manners: The Queen of Longtrellis eating a dragon's heart as seen in the page image. It's not like the Necromancer said anything about not using a knife and a fork...
- Marital Rape License: The ogre naturally forces himself on Violet shortly after he gets her back to his lair.
- My Beloved Smother: The Queen of Longtrellis is insane about her son.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The family of circus performers rescue Violet from her abusive husband only to be murdered by said husband shortly after.
- Not Quite Dead: You'd think the ogre would have died falling into the deep chasm, but he just shows up again after a while.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The "sea monster" the King of Longtrellis has to slay for its heart is a pale, axolotl-inspired water dragon.
- Our Ogres Are Hungrier: The ogre whom Violet is "married" to is a large, bald, brutish, strong man who lives in a cave.
- Power at a Price: The Necromancer's advice to the Queen of Longtrellis is made of this. First he advises the queen to eat a dragon's heart if she wants to get pregnant, and the king dies fighting the dragon. Then he changes the queen into a monster herself to have her kill Jonah in exchange for the safe return of her son Elias, but she's killed by Elias himself.
- Prince and Pauper: The son of the Queen of Longtrellis and his identical, low-born counterpart.
- Really Gets Around: The King of Strongcliff is not only The Casanova, he often partakes in hedonistic orgies.
- Red/Green Contrast: Occurs when Dora is rejuvenated, the red blanket (along with her long red hair) contrast the green of the forest and the mossy rocks around her.
- Reduced to Ratburgers: The Queen of Longtrellis eating a dragon's heart, not from hunger, but for the magic promised her.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: The King of Longtrellis himself goes hunting a water dragon in an underwater fight without a second thought and kills it. He dies because of his wounds, though.
- Sacrificial Lion: The King of Longtrellis as described above in Royals Who Actually Do Something. The guy had cojones.
- Silence Is Golden: As it happens in this current of Italian filmmaking, most scenes have non-existent dialogue.
- Slashed Throat: Violet kills the Ogre this way, along with some good element of surprise.
- Spoiled Sweet: Prince Elias calls his Queen Mother out for threatening to punish Jonah's mother, who had nothing to do with Elias disobeying orders. Then, of course, he thinks of Jonah as a brother and immediately comes to his rescue when alerted that Jonah is in danger.
- This Was His True Form: The monster killed by Elias turns into his mother, the Queen of Longtrellis.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The heart of the sea monster is bigger than a human head and still beating even after being out of its owner's body for several hours at least. The young woman tasked to cook it for the queen doesn't react as if it's anything other than a normal cut of meat.
- Unnervingly Heartwarming: The film basically runs on being deliberately unsettling. In particular, there are several moments when Princess Viola's husband acts tenderly towards her (as tenderly as he can, at least). He is also a huge, brutish Frazetta Man ogre to whom she is married against her will and who regularly rapes her, not to mention that he makes a bloodbath of her would-be rescuers. The ogre and Viola share one particularly affectionate moment with hand-holding and held gazes right after that bloodbath and right before Viola manages to kill him.
- White and Red and Eerie All Over: With a dash of Dark Is Evil. The black-dressed Longtrellis sitting on a black chair eats the red and blood-soaked dragon heart in a sterile-looking white room, as shown in the poster too.
