The Thirteenth Tale (2013)
Biographer Margaret Lea travels to the isolated rural mansion of the famous writer Vida Winter, who asks her to write her biography. Although initially she is reluctant, as Vida is known for constantly distorting the facts of her life, Margaret soon becomes fascinated with the story of a dark childhood, a disturbing tale that leads her to finally confront the traumas of her own past.
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The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
So... It's really difficult to find a director and a script writer with fewer imagination and lack of drama perception. SCRIPT WRITER: I was actually shocked to discover that Christopher Hampton, the script writer, is Oscar winning. I admit I never saw Dangerous Liaisons but I did see Atonement and I liked it dearly. Yet this script lacks everything expected from a script writer of this amplitude. The way he lost momentum of what in the book are most carefully threaded subplots, some of the dialog not only simply obliterated, but, worse, amputated, characters unreasonable modified or even excluded altogether in a most uninspired way... all tat is absolutely disconcerting. I never expected a movie to follow every letter of the book it's based upon, but there is a limit to which you are bound if you want your movie to hoover around the same level of quality the book does. Christopher Hampton though, thought different. I'm under the impression that he wrote this script in the most unprofessional way he could ever write a script, in the manner one would do if one forgot about the deadline and remembered it the day it should have been delivered. Script wise, the movie is a complete shame on Christopher Hampton's panoply. DIRECTOR: If I was Diane Setterfield I would be very unsatisfied by how this movie turned out. But I think more than being disappointed by the script writer, I would be so by the director. James Kent directed more than one movie based on a book. One of them - I loved the book but I HATED the movie - is 11.22.63. Not gonna comment it here though. The distracted way in which The Thirteenth Tale was directed is disconcerting. Unbelievable how actors like Vanessa Redgrave's or Olivia Colman's acting was reduced to utter amatorism by this director. The same sensation I experienced watching 11.22.63 which I already mentioned. James Franco looked like an impotent amator, not like the great actor he actually is. The only actress that resisted this mutilation of talent and turned out completely untainted was Sophie Turner. Thumbs up for her - and not the first time, either. The location of the filming is superb - I've been in the area (not seen the actual park, only Helmsley) and just like probably most of the countryside England, it is breathtaking - yet this doesn't transpire from the movie. The scenes concentrate on debilitated characters instead of the majesty of the land. A house that is the actual centre in the book for most of the plot is barely filmed here and there and that's only an example. So, considering the two main things that can make a movie an Oscar winning one or a simple celluloid pulp - just, as, unfortunately, The Thirteenth Tale is - scripting and directing, were impossibly idiotic this time. Hence my recommendation: don't watch the movie if you read the book, unless you are a script writer or a director and you want to learn what not to do when doing your job. Or, better yet, just read the book and forget the movie. You'll have more to win like that.
Beware - this isn't scary or creepy. The plot is totally implausible, the characters not fully delineated. Evil sister. Good sister. Spare sister. Hackneyed tropes abound, e.g. the ethereal children's voices singing, guess what? - Ring Around the Rosies, that staple of spooky children movies. The scenery and locations are stunning and beautifully filmed. It looks like an expensive production but it's all very much style over substance.Olivia Colman has nothing much to do and so does nothing much. I've never considered Vanessa Redgrave a great actress but I have to give her credit for saying this line with a straight face: 'If you don't tell your stories, they die and come back to haunt you.' I'm tempted to say 'So what?' It's complete nonsense. Just like this drama. Should have stopped at 12.
The film was pushed as a spooky, supernatural story when it is more of a thriller.Vanessa Redgrave is the dying writer. Olivia Coleman is the biographer called in to write a story of her youth in a large house with a dysfunctional family. A mother who went mad. A father on the verge of madness. Plus uncontrollable sisters who are a burden to the housekeepers.The film takes a while to get going but the book has been adapted for the screen by Oscar winner Christopher Hampton. As the film develops, secrets are revealed about the twin sisters and their effect of the people around them.The film is well acted and the story gradually draws you in and surprises you as it does not go the way you think it will. Of course I have never read the book so no comparison is made with the novel. It's a drama that stands in its own merits.
...not generally a fan of 'ghostly' stories but was curious to see the fine cast of The 13th Tale. It was gripping from the beginning, superb acting, stunningly pretty and horrid little girls, sensational sets and music which really helped keep the concentration - a marvellous production and of course original story. Having been drawn in, I was soon to be flabbergasted when I realised some of it was shot at Duncombe Park where I was at prep. school in the 60's - a first shot of the entrance gates, the drive and steps to the front door I knew at once! - a much loved place by most of us who were lucky enough then to have assembly and put on the Nativity Play in the main Saloon,walk through the doors onto the terrace, build dens around the Yew Walk and around the Temples, play on the same swing and around Father Time, admire the mahogany staircase only for the staff to use, peer down into the Main Hall with its chequerboard floor waiting for parents to arrive, have story time each evening with the Head whilst sitting round her on the floor of her Study, the Library... I was transfixed and quite horrified to see the house as burnt out shell!! How did you do that? overall a magnificent and moving production, just a perfect setting for the story... thank you to Heyman Productions and the BBC