The historical drama 'The Queen's Game' with Jude Law and Alicia Vikander as royal figures has reached Russian online cinemas.

The film tells the story of Catherine Parr (Alicia Vikander), the sixth and last wife of Henry VIII (Jude Law). When her husband leaves for France, he appoints the protagonist as regent, effectively granting her state power. However, upon returning home, he seeks to weaken her influence, suspecting her of betrayal. Despite the king's progressive madness, these accusations are not entirely unfounded: she indeed indulged radicals among the Protestants. From that moment, Catherine's life turns into a living hell.

Director Karim Aïnouz, who a few years ago was awarded the Cannes 'Un Certain Regard' for 'The Invisible Life of Euridice', made a film that, at the synopsis level, resembles a whole cohort of films about strong (and, importantly, cunning) women at the court of a tyrant monarch ('The Favourite' by Yorgos Lanthimos, 'Mary Queen of Scots' by Josie Rourke, Maïwenn). However, upon closer inspection, you will hardly find in 'The Queen's Game' the usual components of the subgenre of costume (melodramas). It is a claustrophobic, devoid of any visual luxury, thriller about domestic violence set in the England of Henry VIII's reign, or as he is called in the film, 'the evil and unnecessary king'.

Varvara Ulyanenok

A Courtesan Named Jeanne: Review of the Film 'Jeanne du Barry'

Open material

The key problem with the film is that it doesn't really need historical context. Essentially, the only thing the film focuses on, even slightly, is the conflict between Catherine, a convinced Protestant and supporter of carrying the Reformation to the end, and Henry's entourage with him at the head. However, the modern feminist lens shifts the story into the plane of confrontation between a male tyrant and a female rebel, without really touching on ideological points. It's simple: she is reasonable, 'for everything good and against everything bad,' he is the living embodiment of human stupidity and cruelty.

We have already seen Henry VIII on screen many times, played by various actors — Richard Burton, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jared Harris, Keith Michell, Eric Bana, and others. But perhaps it is in 'The Queen's Game' that the image of the paranoid tyrant king has been most vividly realized. And this is undoubtedly the merit of Aïnouz's main star, Jude Law, a national favorite who here is trusted to play a despicable, pathetic villain who evokes nothing but disgust. And he handles this role excellently, though overshadowing the protagonist herself, played by Vikander.

Catherine Parr is a rare guest in historical dramas about the Tudor era. Unlike, for example, Anne Boleyn, about whom a lot has been filmed, including the well-known AMC series with black actress Jodie Turner-Smith. It is all the more unfortunate that the director of 'The Queen's Game' failed to fully develop Alicia Vikander's character as a ruler, whose experience would later be relied upon by Henry VIII's daughter, Elizabeth I. Incidentally, the voiceover at the beginning and end of the film belongs to the latter.

In the end, we get a rather bland and unnecessary film, which is pulled out of the abyss of an incoherent drama about domestic violence only by Jude Law's outstanding performance, stealing every scene with his appearance.

Trailer: