Film Ramble: The Fall

I only heard about The Fall quite recently.  In fact, to say I heard about it is an overstatement, I saw a trailer somewhere and thought, 'hey, that looks interesting'.  I'm baffled as to how it managed to pass me by for four years, because it's one of the best fantasy films - indeed, one of the best films - I've seen.

The Fall covers similar thematic ground to The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen and Pan's Labyrinth - and while those are two of my all-time favourite movies, I wouldn't hesitate to say that it holds its own.  In 1920's LA, a young girl and a heart-broken Hollywood stuntman are recuperating in the same hospital.  After a chance encounter, the stuntman begins to tell an elaborate, fantastical story to the girl, for reasons that only become apparent as the plot develops.  We see both the events unfolding in the hospital and the tale the stuntman narrates, a bizarre and ever-shifting fable filtered through a child's perceptions and director Tarsem Singh's gorgeous imagery.  And by gorgeous, I mean gorgeous.  I can't wait to pick this up on blu-ray, it's like somebody animated a National Geographic calendar and then somehow worked in a surreal, exhilarating fantasy story just for kicks.

Oh, and if the poster looks familiar, it's because it's based on Salvador Dali's painting Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment.  Why?  I have no clue, but it's kind of neat.