While watching this, for the first 2/3 of it I was literally engrossed by the stories. They were thick and full of culture and taste and feeling and touch. The scenes drew you in to what was happening in a way few movies do anymore. I didn't like all the characters. I didn't root for all the characters to win. And I didn't always feel badly if they lost. But this movie spun the stories so well you were completely immersed and it was delicious. I wanted to taste the food, feel the fabrics, smell the perfumes and fires. The stories themselves were interesting, told in a way that felt new.
Then all of a sudden everything flipped. It was like cold water was thrown on the movie but you were supposed to try and still enjoy it as before. I actually felt violated by the massive shift the story took from that point forward. The best way I can describe it would be to say it was cold. No warmth.
The beginning of the movie, we are made to see Tilda as cold and reserved. She's given up on anything related to love and emotional happiness and replaced it with intellectual happiness. And she does seem to be a fulfilled woman, albeit somewhat atiff. Yet this is when the movie is telling the fullest, warmest, most enthralling stories. These stories have an affect on Tilda, apparently changing her so much that she chooses to change the course of her life. During the last of the movie she is now in the midst of love, warmth, and living her fullest life. But this is when the movie becomes incredibly cold and devoid of any feelings. The stories are clinically told, just facts relaying events. There's no culture, no warmth, no feelings, no drawing you in through the richness of the scene. At this point, the movie doesn't feel right and it doesn't match what you are seeing. You're supposed to believe they are in love, fully romantic, all consuming love. But it feels like a complete lie. She kept calling him a trickster, and this felt like a trick. Next, you see the consequences of this wish, which to be honest seem bizarre and out of the blue. She decides to fix her mistake, but again this doesn't feel right either. It felt like she became a pet to him, fully devoted to him, but understanding that she doesn't matter in the same way to him. And that adds another element of an almost icky nature to this last part of the movie.
And the final nail in it all, the end when he shows back up again.
Are they friends? Lovers? Master and pet? It feels so forced and contrived at the end.
I wish they would have simply made a movie about his stories. And they moved her so much that she, with her first wish, sets him free. Not because she romantically loves him. But because it's the right thing to do. And this brings her so much satisfaction that she decides to indulge in imagination again and begins writing stories instead of only teaching about them. Yes, it's much more simple and probably formulaic. But that's what the beginning of the movie had going for it.... the beauty of the stories, woven and told with love and longing. Let that be the inspiration, not whatever the ending was attempting to be.