This film was released 17th June 2016, and is no longer screening.

★★★★★ The Guardian

An anthology of fables drawn from a 17th century book of Neapolitan folk tales compiled by the poet Giambattista Basile, Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales is a baroque fantasy of three mythical lands and their distressed rulers.

A childless queen (Salma Hayek) sends her husband (John C. Reilly) to battle a sea monster; a king (Toby Jones) becomes obsessed with his pet flea, which has grown to gargantuan proportions; a third philandering monarch (Vincent Cassel) is seduced by the heavenly singing of an unseen maiden. A gloriously realized fantasia featuring a rogue’s gallery of otherworldly grotesques, Tale of Tales sees the director leave the social commentaries of Gomorrah (2008) and Reality (2012) very much behind him. Pitched somewhere between Grimm’s fairytales, Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life with smatterings of Monty Python (and even Shrek), this delightfully imaginative film defies easy categorisation. (Notes by David O’Mahony.)

FEAST YOUR EYES

Make a night of it and join us on June 21st at 18.15 for our dedicated Feast Your Eyes screening of Tale of Tales with a meal afterwards, for just €20. Free list suspended.