“David Fincher and Spike Jonze Presents...” trumpets the opening credits of The Fall rather grandly. As well it might. Tarsem Singh, the wunderkind commercials director, has financed the film from his own pocket and shot it over four years in 28 different countries. Such a lavish undertaking needs all the hip friends it can get.
An adult fairy tale which curtseys to The Princess Bride and Pan’s Labyrinth, Mr. Singh’s dazzling, impossibly original spectacle is framed by early Hollywood woes.
Following an accident which may have cost him a leg, melancholic silent-screen stuntman Roy (Lee Pace) lies in hospital pining for a lost love and contemplating suicide. He finds an unlikely diversion from his sorrows in an adventurous Romanian 5-year-old named Alexandria (the uncannily good Catinca Untaru, somebody hand this kid an Oscar) who is convalescing from a broken arm. Roy regales her with tall tales involving freed slaves, Charles Darwin, exotic butterflies and heroic elephants until these fanciful devices are intruding on the little girl’s already heightened sense of reality.
It is quite some time before we realise that Roy’s musings mask ulterior motives.
Though The Fall’s fragmented fancies never quite coalesce into a satisfactory whole, it’s far too pretty to argue with. If this is what the director can do with pocket money, let’s give him a big-arsed fantasy franchise, then stand back and watch the fireworks.