with some analysis… loads of spoilers… Turn back now if this is not your thing!
Tale of Tales is a 2015 film by Matteo Garrone whose previous claim to fame is the gritty crime drama Gomorrah (2008) that won the Grand Prix at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. The film is a dark tale of three tangentially connected narratives full of fairytale logic of impossible tasks and dark magic, princesses to be married off and obsessive queens.
Told in the same style as the bloody and pornographic rewrites of classic fairytales in Angela Carter’s Bloody Chamber, this film is brutal and unforgiving in its treatment of female characters. It punishes them in bloody and extreme ways for failing to break out of the roles created for them by the patriarchy: Maiden/ Virgin Bride/ Princess/ Daughter/ Mother/ Queen.