Innuendo

Rating: 7/10 (5 January 2019)

This is a stylish and innovative genre film. The camera movement and angle of photography is not typical for such a film. Similarly, the writing approach is fresh and the terse characterization, along with dialogue, has a sharp and regenerating effect. Add the locations, and the strong cast around the principals, and it's an entertaining film.
Even with these artistic qualities it's a bit of a hoax: it's not history and it's not genuine biography. Sure, it exploits historical entities in some inferred behavior, but that is just speculation and not even toward an objective, that is to say, that some imagination was used to concoct as to why a policy was imposed, such as to pursue a war. No, this film is simply a salacious invention in order to titillate an audience with the idea of what may have occurred. Possibly.
In itself that is not incorrigible: Robert Graves did it brilliantly in his books on the Roman Empire. But it is just fiction, it's not history and it's no historical biography, nor anything like it. It's gossip and innuendo.
The question then is: would anyone watch this if it was invented and just about three women at any time, or does it only work on the basis that it might have been historically true and that authenticity is the necessary ingredient in which an audience gives its time. If that contingency of historical truth is removed than it's a type of fraud because it means only the smallest measure of historical truth makes it watchable and for prurient reasons.