What they are attempting to do is entirely admirable, and at times they succeed throughout the 3 - hour runtime, especially near the end with
a few wonderful sequences and story beats that hit home with a sledgehammer made of feels, finally getting me emotionally engaged in a way that the opening hour couldn't.
There are more than a
few structural similarities to Beauty, including the typical but still
wonderful Thomas Newman score, an older man who becomes sexually infatuated with a young girl, and a series of fantasy
sequences (minus the rose pedals).