A dark, mythic, mysterious "coming-of-age" in Fritz Böhm and Florian Eder's WILDLING

That unusual little actress Bel Powley (of Diary of a Teenage Girl) does another memorable turn as the lead and titular heroine of a new and quite welcome addition to the werewolf genre: WILDLING.

As co-written (with Floridan Eder) and directed by Fritz Böhm, a young German filmmaker new to me, the film boasts the wonderfully mythic, all-encompassing darkness and foreboding of a Brothers Grimm tale involving family, would-be family and a necessary but extremely difficult coming-of-age.

Herr Böhm, pictured at left, has done an excellent job building both tension and empathy for his fish-out-of-water heroine, brought to fine and quite specific life by Powley's very "lived-in" performance. The actress, below, beautifully captures the innocence of her character, as well as her increasingly frightening aspects.

The filmmaker has done a particularly welcome job of capturing the strange and storybook atmosphere that makes his movie seem as much like some modern version of an odd old folk tale as anything else.

There's the abandoned child, the missing parents, the fairy godmother -- in this case, a godfather in the shape of a wild woodsman (James LeGros, below) -- and of course the something-like-a-curse that hangs over all. 

Appearing in the excellent supporting cast are Liv Tyler (below, who also produced the movie) and the original Chucky, Brad Dourif (two photos below), and especially Collin Kelly-Sordelet (shown at bottom), a young actor new to me who takes the rather standard juvenile lead and turns it into a genuinely felt journey from initial annoyance to attraction, protection and love.

Mostly though it's Ms Powley and the filmmaker's ability to combine atmosphere, dark beauty and smart cinematography (by Toby Oliver) into a kind of timeless tale of the animal in us that must come out.

As the movie rises to its conclusion, a few too many genre cliches sprout (without being handled by the filmmaker in any unusual way), but the ending is sad, sweet and brings us full circle. Less a horror film than a dark fairy tale, Wildling proves a very nice, if oddball, addition to its genre -- the best we've seen since Paul Hyett's Howl back in 2015.

From IFC Midnight and running 92 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, April 13, in New York City at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinelounge Sunset) -- with a simultaneous release on VOD and digital HD.

The Little (Sexy, Naughty) Mermaid and her sister show up in Agnieszka Smoczynska's genre-blending THE LURE

Whew! What to make of THE LURE, the new Polish movie from director Agnieszka Smoczynska and writer Robert Bolesto that my spouse insisted simply had to have been made during some former decade because every last one of its accoutrements -- its "look," production design, props, costumes, hair styles, even its music and lyrics -- seem so perfectly attuned to a time past. But, no: The film was indeed made in 2015 and is finally getting its U.S. theatrical release this week. Perhaps the best way to approach the movie is as a kind of singing-dancing, fairy-tale. fantasy, horror movie. It embodies each and all of those genres, and the most remarkable thing about The Lure is that it conflates these genres so well that it arrives on-screen and into our consciousness as something damned near sui-generis.

Ms. Smoczynska (at left) and Mr. Bolesto (below) have worked together previously on a short film and evidently have an awfully good rapport, so they have been able to create a kind of alternate universe in which the most bizarre things happen. And yet they happen so "reasonably" (given the oddness of the time, place and situations) that we simply accept them at face value -- even though that "face" is one we've never quite viewed before. After all, when a pair of young girls rise from the dark water, calling out to the men on shore for help -- while promising not to

eat them -- we've got to know that we're in pretty heady, unusual territory. Soon our girls, claiming to be named "Silver" and "Golden," are living with this on-shore family of entertainers who work in a kind of upper-end strip club, performing as a special attraction and using their ability to change from mermaid to fully human to give their audience an extra treat. And, boy, do they!  (The special effects here are used sparingly but they are done with such skill and imagination that they keep entirely within the movie's special blending of fantasy, sexuality, music, horror -- and romance. It is soon clear, however, that horror will be vying for top dog here (or, in this case, top fish).

The filmmaker's cast, which I will not single out individually, is remarkably good at delivering just what the writer and director ordered. Down the line, each actor's performance seem on target and able to convey via acting, singing, movement and more exactly what's required to keep us in the audience alternately charmed and flabbergasted but always entertained.

Channeling myth, folk tale, romance, sleaze and shock, while providing strange songs that will have you reading the English subtitles quickly and carefully for meaning and enjoyment, the movie races along from scene to scene as sex, romance -- along with the need to feed -- rears their rueful little heads.

TrustMovies did not notice any rating given for this movie -- which he suspects means that it remains unrated. The manner in which The Lure deals with nudity and sexuality (inter-species, at that) means that it most definitely is not for children -- unless parents are willing to spend a rather long time explaining things that may lose much of their magic and/or shock value in translation.

What does it all mean? That question is not even pertinent, I think. The film is what it is. And what it is proves outrageous and rather spectacular, colorful, breathtaking fun.

At the very least it might provide a nice corrective for those folk taken in by all the Hollywood hype over La La Land who were then a tad disappointed when they finally sat through this musical-of-the-moment.

From Janus Films and running a fleet and sometimes quite darkly funny 92 minutes, The Lure opens this Wednesday in New York City at the IFC Center. Elsewhere? I sure hope so. Laemmle's Noho 7 in Los Angeles is said to be presenting a movie called The Lure come early March, but one can't tell from the advance posting whether this is the same film discussed above. I don't understand why the Janus web site for the film is not more helpful in this regard. Posting playdates would be of great benefit to viewers who might want to see the movie.

In the dark, delicious fairy TALE OF TALES, Matteo Garrone comes through once again

Are you a fan of the kind of fairy tales that don't have a Disney happy ending but rather explore the darker recesses of human nature, along with the results that go with those recesses? If so, you won't want to miss a major surprise from Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone (shown below), who earlier gave us Gomorrah, Reality, First Love and The Embalmer. Maybe I oughtn't call TALE OF TALES (Il racconto dei racconti) a surprise, since it is every bit as dark -- spirited, imaginative and thrilling -- as the rest of Garrone's oeuvre. But who'd have thought the filmmaker would decide to explore fairy tales?

TrustMovies will be eternally grateful that he did, however, for his addition to the genre proves as good as, and very likely better than just about anything else you can name. As sumptuous and beautiful as a fairy tale demands, the movie also manages to look both "period" and "real" (something that, say, the recent Disney Cinderella, despite being quite lightly enjoyable, never managed). Tale of Tales is consistently eye-popping, and this makes it seems utterly exotic when compared to others in its genre. The movie has everything: terrific stories, amazing beauty, a tricky but genuine morality, and some really great monsters, too. This must be the biggest budget Garrone has yet had to play with and, by god, he makes the most of it. The movie is lavish, all right, yet it never seems wasteful.

Among the many Italians on view (yes, Alba Rohrwacher's here!), the movie sports an international cast to die for: Mexico's Salma Hayek (above), France's Vincent Cassel (below, center, with Stacy Martin) and Britain's Toby Jones (two photos below) --  all playing the kind of entitled royalty that hasn't a clue how to care for anyone other than themselves, including, unfortunately, treasured family members.

These "royalty" stories, while separate, are entwined via the theme of justice served (one way or another), as Garrone bounces back and forth between the tales with high energy and great elan. His stories are taken from the work of the 16th-Century Italian, Giambattista Basile, who did for Italian fairy tales what Charles Perrault did for French and the Grimm Brothers for German -- but Basile did it first. And the fact that we are nowhere near as familiar with Basile's tales as we are with the Grimms' or Perrault's makes them seem all the more entrancing and special.

We don't know the outcomes here, and there are a number of surprises along the way, each of them dished up rather spectacularly. The "special effects" are as good as you could imagine, while the "monsters" are especially creative -- particularly the rather adorable "giant flea."

All the tales are dark, cunning, amazing and often funny, but the best probably belongs to the daughter (a fine performance by Bebe Cave, above, right) of the king played by Mr. Jones, who, thanks to that flea and her father's selfishness, finds herself wedded to an ogre (Guillaume Delaunay, above, left). Their final scene together is sad, stern and rigorously unsentimental -- something that can be said about all of Garrone's work, it seems to me.

So, should you take the kids to see Tale of Tales (it's in English; there are no subtitles to rankle)? That depends on how willing you'll be to discuss the movie afterwards. (There'll be a lot to talk about.) If those kids are thoughtful, intelligent and aged maybe 8 or 10 or beyond, I'd say, sure. It's a film that they -- you, too -- are likely to remember and even think about for quite some time. (That's John C. Reilly, below, left, playing the one member of royalty who does the right thing -- and pays for it. There's always a price to be paid, as one character points out early on.)

From Sundance Selects/IFC Films and running 133 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, April 22, in New York City at the IFC Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and on Friday, April 29, in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica Film Center. Elsewhere? Sure hope so. A film this spectacular and special deserves to be seen on the big screen. But if you don't live near any major cultural capital, be assured that Tale of Tales will appear on VOD simultaneously with its theatrical release.

SCN opens with Pablo Berger's (and Spain's Oscar-entry) BLANCANIEVES

A much more genuine "silent film" (if that's what you want) than last year's The Artist, Spain's entry into the Best Foreign Language Film "Oscar" race, BLANCANIEVES, is the real thing, all right, succeeding both as an homage to "silents" and -- because of its ambition and insight, not to mention what movies are capable of technically these days -- a truly new creation all its own.

Retelling the Snow White fairy-tale while giving it a decidedly Spanish spin, writer/
director Pablo Berger (who, nearly a decade ago offered up his only other full-length feature,
the great Torremolinos 73), combines the customs of Spain (bullfighting, anyone?) with the story's own identifying objects (a wicked stepmother gloriously played by Maribel Verdú, above) into a Grimm stew of dark and delightful variations on the original and already dark fairy tale's themes.

If you didn't get the chance to see this film at Spanish Cinema Now (SCN), never fear. Cohen Media Group has picked  it up for U.S. distribution in early 2013; at its opening I'll have more to say about this very special film. For now let me just mention that you can indeed take the kids to see it -- so long as they can read the subtitles. While it goes into adult areas (Stepmom's into S&M!), it does so fleetingly and "tastefully," as becomes a silent movie. And it is consistently suggestive rather than coarse in its visuals (the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography is by Kiko de la Rica of The Last Circus) -- never more so than in its amazing final scene.

Here, Berger takes a magnificent leap, and what has heretofore been a lovely retelling of an old tale transforms into... oh, god, so many possibilities that I must see the film again to re-discover. You're going to have to open up a discussion with your kids about this scene and what it means. But it'll be worth it. You'll all learn and grow and be made aware again (maybe for the first time for those kids) of what movies are very occasionally capable.

Spanish Cinema Now has just begun. There is lots to come, so click here to see the whole schmear.

Breillat's BLUEBEARD: the expected -- and then some

On the face of it, there is little question why famous French moviemaker Catherine Breillat (shown below) would take her stab at adapting Bluebeard to the screen. This strange and ugly but insistently encroach-
ing story is one of several even more famous faux-folk-tale/fairy tales by 17th Century Frenchman Charles Perrault, whose oeuvre includes Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Poots and Donkeyskin (which another French filmmaker, Jacques Demy, turned into a fetching little film a few decades back).

As unlike as Breillat is to Demy, so is Bluebeard to most other fairy tales -- a genre which M. Perrault is given credit for inventing -- as it encompasses serial killing and violence to women while flirting with pederasty (though young girls did marry earlier back then).  Yet it's a near-perfect match for Ms Breillat, dealing as it does with the perils of sisterhood (see her Fat Girl aka À ma soeur) and the power struggle between men and women.

Because the story's themes are innately feminist without requiring any further push, this leaves the movie open to simply be "told," which the movie-maker handles with quiet relish and enough style to carry us along.  Telling the actual tale in its own time frame (with sets and costumes --above -- that seem both appropriate and gorgeous), she offers a clever counterpart in a second pair of sisters (below) who appear to be living in the mid-20th Century, and who retire to the attic in order to read and scare each other with the Bluebeard tale.  Here, as in the actual story, it's the younger of the two sisters who is more open, courageous, feisty and funny, so the counterpoint of time frames and mores make for additional fun and thought.  (At one point, so wrapped up in the tale does the little sister grow, that she becomes the character and we follow her, for a time, into forbidden territory.)

BLUEBEARD is a nice film to look at, too, and although all the per-
formers are new to me, each does a fine job.  In the title role, Dominique Thomas even looks quite like the character in the 19th cen-
tury illustration (shown at left) by Gustave Doré.    Breillat is also able to get her licks in regarding religion (the sisters are at convent school when they hear some bad news, given them with barely concealed disdain and deliberate pain by the nun-in-charge), the economics of survival for women (then and now) and perhaps the most important women's lesson of all (used consistently by everyone from Scheherazade to Lucille Ball):
When in trouble, stall.

Bluebeard, just the right length at a mere 80 minutes, opens its exclusive premier U.S. engagement in New York City via Strand Releasing on Friday, March 26, at the IFC Center. Further playdates scheduled so far appear below.

4/30/10: Burton Theatre, Detroit, MI

4/30/10: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH 44106

6/4/10:  Wexner Center for the Art, Columbus, OH

6/16/10:  George Eastman House, Rochester, NY