‘Firebrand’ Review: Alicia Vikander and Jude Law Rule in Karim Aïnouz’s Whip-Smart Historical Drama Bristling With Court Intrigue – Hollywood Reporter

Early on in Karim Aïnouz’s richly textured and suspenseful historic drama, Firebrand, King Henry VIII commends his sixth and last spouse, Catherine Parr, on her glorious job filling in as Regent whereas he’s been overseas engaged in warfare. By no means thoughts the efforts to restrict her powers to inconsequential issues, he tells her she gained’t have to fret her “fairly little head” about all that anymore. The risk posed by girls who suppose for themselves to absolutely the energy of males is a central theme on this starch-free story of Tudor intrigue, its protofeminist perspective seamlessly woven into the narrative cloth with no trace of the didactic.

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Brazilian director Aïnouz has been making hypnotically sensual motion pictures laced with luxuriant melancholy for greater than 20 years, amongst them such beguiling dramas as Madame Satã, The Silver Cliff and the criminally under-appreciated jewel Invisible Life (critically, test it out, you’ll thank me), in addition to quite a few distinctive documentaries.

Firebrand

The Backside Line

Rescues an inspiring girl from historical past’s footnotes.

His English-language debut, tailored from Elizabeth Freemantle’s lauded novel The Queen’s Gambit by screenwriters Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth, is one thing of a departure for Aïnouz into the possibly stiffer area of interval drama. However Firebrand, regardless of being steeped within the atmospheric grit and gloom of a rustic enveloped by plague and underneath tyrannical rule, is alive with vigorous modern angle. It steers away from the same old anachronistic methods (save for the exhilarating deployment of a PJ Harvey banger over the top credit), as an alternative instilling its modernity and its reflections on gender disparity and spousal abuse by subtler means.

In some ways it’s a religious prequel to Elizabeth, the terrific 1998 bio-drama that thrust Cate Blanchett onto the map, even when there have been two monarchs between Henry VIII and the Virgin Queen — portrayed right here as a sharply observant younger girl by vibrant newcomer Junia Rees, who will get a stunner of a last shot.

Just like the Blanchett movie, Firebrand offers an important main function for an actress to chew into, which Alicia Vikander does with gusto, but additionally with the restraint and watchful self-possession of a lady properly conscious that it hasn’t all the time ended properly for her predecessors in Henry’s mattress. It’s her finest work since Ex Machina.

As for the ailing monarch, pained by swollen legs, ulcerated with gout and oozing blood and malodorous pus, Jude Regulation is frighteningly mercurial. Jovial one minute and harmful the subsequent, his Henry is a person whose physique is failing him, fairly actually festering with poison. He’s both grunting away on prime of Catherine like a heaving mass or side-eyeing her with suspicions of betrayal. His two favourite phrases look like “Shut up!”

What’s presumably most spectacular in Regulation’s layered efficiency is the proof underneath Henry’s ruthlessness that he actually does love Catherine sufficient to hope that she doesn’t become just like the others, all of whom he believes failed or betrayed him. His rage is terrifying when he rails on the Lord for testing him, foaming on the mouth along with his useful technique of dispatching inconvenient wives: “We lower them down!”

Henry’s chief gripe apart from being barely ambulatory is his indignation in regards to the rising following of the Protestant radicals itching for a revolution that will permit them to worship God over king. One such radical faction is led by Catherine’s childhood good friend Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), whose fiery ardour for the trigger lands her on the needed listing for treason. Catherine’s go to to Anne at a shrine throughout Henry’s absence places her in danger, as does a later assembly the place she offers Anne a useful necklace she obtained from Henry, urging her to promote it for cash to get by the winter.

The king’s rising mistrust of Catherine is fueled by the fixed whispers in his ear from the fiercely anti-Protestant Bishop Stephen Gardiner (performed with sinister Machiavellian objective by the good Simon Russell Beale). Conscious that Henry’s days are numbered and anxious to orchestrate the succession his method, he steadily will increase his efforts to incriminate Catherine for treason.

The Bishop’s willpower to show her affiliation with Anne Askew entails interrogating guards and her ladies-in-waiting, who stay unflinchingly loyal regardless of threats of execution. Gardiner additionally leans laborious on Edward Seymour (Eddie Marsan), uncle of the potential future king, to supply proof of Catherine’s extramarital relationship along with his brother Thomas (Sam Riley). However Catherine is simply too sensible to threat infidelity, although the 2 have remained shut.

Anybody acquainted with who amongst Henry’s wives died, was solid out or survived is aware of the result for Catherine, making it shocking how skillfully the filmmakers construct nail-biting stress round her destiny. That comes with a serious help from Dickon Hinchliffe’s brooding symphonic rating, its vary and energy expertly modulated all through. The ultimate days of Henry’s life change into a time of terror for Catherine, and her plan of action is maybe one of many screenwriters’ most vital — and startlingly efficient — detours into speculative fiction.

In most dramas of historical royal chicanery, the intrinsically good character is the least fascinating. That’s by no means the case right here with Vikander’s Catherine, an enlightened girl who’s all about quiet management. She stays agency in her idealistic beliefs regardless of the rot that surrounds her, principally retains her personal counsel and is gutsy sufficient to threat offending the king if it means snatching again her dignity after considered one of his routine public humiliations.

In some methods the movie’s title is a misnomer in that she’s no person’s standard thought of a firebrand, however the certainty of her dedication is evident even underneath the worst duress. By no means over-emphasizing the character’s unusual braveness, Vikander additionally conveys actual worry, alongside Catherine’s resolve, and her agony is wrenching in a scene the place the potential lifeline of delivering Henry a son slips from her grasp.

There are pretty moments of solidarity among the many girls — the younger Elizabeth in addition to Catherine’s workers — that feed into the thematic basis of girls bringing an escape from the brutality of males and battle, in addition to being able to forging pathways into the sunshine, extra open and tolerant. The very existence of this movie, as Aïnouz factors out, is a reminder of how way more fixated historical past typically is on useless girls than survivors.

The constantly engrossing storytelling is matched by luxurious, usually painterly visuals, with cinematographer Hélène Louvart’s discreet rigging creating the phantasm of utilizing solely pure mild within the interiors from candles, fireplaces or home windows. The manufacturing and costume design (Helen Scott and Michael O’Connor, respectively) are also first-rate, from the high-born characters of their finery to the radicals in rags. For followers of historic drama with edge and vitality, this one’s very a lot value your time.

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