Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselvesand Their Greedy Families in 16th-Century Tudor England

Rating: 5/10 (11 June 2008)

When they were publicizing the theatrical release of this film during a fluffy interview with Matt Lauer on "The Today Show", Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman came across as two attractive, sensible young women who admired each other to no end. Ironically, that bonding is exactly what works against the movie, specifically the lack of a sharp edge in their characters' intractable relationship which dilutes how far sibling rivalry can go in shaping fates and destroying lives. Granted there's a palpably pulpish tone to this fanciful 2008 historical fiction based on Phillipa Gregory's 2002 novel, but the royal intrigue in the House of Tudor is overwhelmed by melodramatic flourishes and transparent character development. First-time feature director Justin Chadwick (BBC's "Bleak House") has made a handsome film with an attractive trio of stars, but he places most of his focus on the soap opera elements of the book's adaptation by Peter Morgan, a specialist in merging fiction with truth ("The Queen", "The Last King of Scotland"), and lays waste to what could have been a more fully rounded historical drama.
The overstuffed story begins with a cursory portrayal of the Boleyn sisters, headstrong Anne and diffident Mary. Even though Mary is married to wealthy courtier William Carey, the sisters soon find themselves in a competition for the affections of King Henry VIII, thanks to the machinations of their weak-willed father Thomas and their Machiavellian uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Henry is initially drawn toward Mary's gentle nature, siring an illegitimate son as he is still married to the barren Catherine of Aragon. However, Mary's difficult pregnancy and mandatory bedrest opens an opportunity for Anne, who uses all her cunning wiles to land the King. At the expense of Mary's happiness, Anne succeeds but not before the creation of the Church of England and her own ascension to England's Queen. Meanwhile, Henry evolves from gregarious womanizer to haunted despot, and everyone already knows what becomes of Anne at the end. The film's perspective alternates between the sisters, thus reducing Henry to a convenient plot device. Thanks to the film's broad brush strokes, the challenge for the viewer is to monitor the imbalance between the sisters. For instance, Mary is rather bland in her virtue but her story is affecting, while Anne is comparatively intriguing in her blind ambition but her fate feels less than tragic.
I still think Johansson is the more natural temptress on screen, but she actually plays Mary and manages to elicit sympathy to her character with surprising ease. However, Portman gets the lion's share of meaty scenes and runs with them, especially a couple of effective face-offs with Henry. As expected, both are alluring in period costume even as their accents waver a bit. As Henry, Eric Bana seems to have been hired for his brooding persona and beefcake appeal, while the character's lightning-fast transitions make Henry an elliptical figure at best in Morgan's truncated script. Kristin Scott Thomas again brings her innate chilliness to the abbreviated role of Boleyn's mother, while there are mildly interesting turns by Jim Sturgess ("Across the Universe") as devoted brother George, Mark Rylance as Thomas, and David Morrissey (Sharon Stone's befuddled paramour in the execrable "Basic Instinct II") as the Duke of Norfolk. Spanish actress Ana Torrent brings conviction to her few scenes as Catherine of Aragon. Sandy Powell, no stranger to the period ("Shakespeare in Love"), designed the exquisite costumes, while John Paul Kelly's sumptuous production design feels authentic. Kieran McGuigan's richly colorful cinematography is undermined by his recurring tendency to use a side-swipe effect to transition shots. Production details aside, the film remains stubbornly hollow at its core.
Starting with Chadwick's zealous albeit sometimes overly technical commentary track, the 2008 DVD has a robust set of extras. Thumbnail sketches of the film's historical figures are provided in brief video snippets with insight provided by scholars and various members of the cast. Two featurettes are also included - a ten-minute short, "To Be a Lady", which discusses the severely limited role of women in the 16th century, a theme addressed pretty well in the film; and another ten-minute short, "Translating History to Screen", which prominently features Gregory and focuses on how a voluminous bodice-ripper of a book had to be pared down to a running time of 115 minutes. Separately, there are twelve scenes presented, mostly expanded versions of the ones that ended up in the film and none I would consider indispensable to the final cut. Rounding out the extras is a brief reel of a test used to calibrate the HD cameras used during the shoot, as well as eight previews of other films.