The director Tarsem Singh, a high-profile music video maker of Indian origin, spent millions of his own money filming this movie in 28 countries. The resulting visually grand scenes are seen in the fairytale sequences of the movie. The money is well spent, matching and in ways exceeding the biggest mainstream productions.

The fairytales are being told by a hospital patient Lee Pace to another patient, a little girl called Alexandria, played by Catinca. The hospital sequences make up about half of the movie, but are not very interesting next to Pace's stories. While the words of the tales come from Pace, what we see on the screen is produced by the wild imagination of Alexandria. Almost like a dream, events often don't follow the rules of logic, being only constrained by what Pace or Alexandria invent on the spot.

Tarsem's visuals are outstanding, enough so to make the movie worth watching just for them, for those who appreciate that sort of thing in movies. They don't make up a particularly solid story however, being more invidual scenes, frequently interrupted by events in the hospital.

Catinca is a Romanian actress, and speaks imperfected English, which also is a trait of her character. Possibly because her rare cultural background, I found her body language frequently hard to interpret. Similarly confusing are many cuts of the movie, with poor timing or otherwise bad continuity. Finally, dialogue is sometimes hard to hear. These problems matter, but aren't deal breakers.

Catinca's acting isn't very nuanced, but she does come across natural. The character is more interesting than average, if only because she's something different from what I'm used to seeing.