|
From Monsters and Critics.com Movies Reviews The facts are loose, the look is extraordinary and the nubile flesh goes on for miles in this better than expected historical biopic. I had low expectations for a film about a serious time in the course of England’s history and while it does seem to mix up the historical Mary and Anne Boleyn (Scarlet Johansson and Natalie Portman), at least it is compelling enough that people may want to go on and read historical studies of the tumultuous period and characters. I feared a whiff of lesbianism between the girls judging by editorials and bloggers’ wish lists but no, that’s not the thing, we don’t see the real scandal coming and it’s a corker. People actually cried out at a screening I attended. It is the 16th century and the House of Tudor is chugging along, bound to the Roman Catholic Church, led by King Henry VIII (Eric Bana), focusing on the sisters and their king, in a romantic mashup of epic proportions. Portman has the flashier role. Johansson plays Mary as an even-tempered, verging on milquetoast beauty who grew up under her elder sister’s shadow and submits to others’ ideas of what is best for her. She is married and monogamous and has no ambition but pleasing her parents. In real life Mary was the elder, described by a French nobleman as ‘a great whore’. The girls are under orders from their father to find wealthy and influential husbands to bolster his prestige and ensure their positions within the Tudor court. The family pushes Anne to seduce the king, a man of huge appetites for food, women and power. Anne enthusiastically agrees to her father’s plan that she ‘beguile’ the married Henry VII. She presents herself to Henry and has some success. But Henry is instead beguiled by the sweet innocent Mary and she becomes his mistress, producing a male child in record time. Anne’s plan is thwarted. Anne is clearly the bad girl and Mary the good; they might as well be wearing black and white cowboy hats. Henry wishes to carry on indulging himself, in what amounts to casting for the role of a wife who will bring him a son. Yet he craves the church’s blessing. No spoiler here - it’s all in the books - a lovesick monarch who breaks from the Roman church to protect his sexual escapades and family succession, the women who vie to have the first son and future king by him, set within the byzantine Tudor court – wow! Screenwriters couldn’t come up with this in a million years. The film could have veered into dangerous territory, a costume drama starring Johansson’s ample cleavage and it does from time to time. But it is well directed, bolstered by gorgeous art direction and costuming, a fast-paced story with a sensational performance by Portman. She knocks it out of the park as showing new power and dimension to her body of work. One quibble is that the accents do not work. Duke becomes ‘jeek’. Kristin Scott Thomas, an authentic English person, sounds like a lazy Yank in comparison to the girls’ over plummy enunciations. In the end, it’s a film based on the protagonists’ beauty threaded together by a juicy royal scandal and served up on a gorgeous platter. Nothing wrong with that. Runtime: 115 © Copyright 2007 by monstersandcritics.com. This notice cannot be removed without permission. |