The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Arabian Nights in Julia Jackman ’s feature debut, a feminist fantasy that leans hard into whimsy while making some salient points about the place of women in the real world. Festivals have been generous to it so far, with both the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week and the London Film Festival giving it their closing-night slots. How it will fare in the real world is a moot point, however, and the film’s arch aesthetic — imagine what Wes Anderson might do with a BBC budget, and less — is hardly a strong selling point. The film’s flaws are pretty much all front-loaded into the almost aggressively twee prologue, and if you can handle that, the rest of the film should be plain sailing.

As per the graphic novel it’s based on, the events of the film to fo

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