*** out of five
Directed by Justin Chadwick
Starring Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, Jim Sturgess
Natalie Portman has always been an actress to keep an eye out for.
After her debut as Jean Reno’s precocious charge and protegé in Léon (The Professional), she rose to fame as Princess Amidala in the Star Wars prequels (one of the few oases of acting ability in the trilogy), and has since proven impressive in The Darjeeling Limited and, most notably, V for Vendetta, alongside Hugo Weaving as a masked rebel intent on following through on Guy Fawkes’s legacy.
In The Other Boleyn Girl, Portman plays the titular character Ann Boleyn, who, charged by her power-hungry father and uncle with seducing King Henry VIII (Eric Bana) in order to capitalize on his wife’s inability to bear him a son for the advancement of the Boleyn family name, initially finds herself spurned in favour of her sister, the placid, wholesome Mary (Scarlett Johansson). With Jim Sturgess playing the Boleyn brother, George, Kristin Scott Thomas as their mother, Lady Elizabeth, and David Morrissey playing the rapacious uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, the film suffers no dearth of talent – or, for that matter, good looks.
However, the story, such as it is, quickly devolves into a courtly soap opera, with the narrative focused so tightly upon King Henry’s dalliances, the duke’s greed, Mary’s angst, and Ann’s ruthless manipulations that the split from the Roman Catholic Church and Henry’s excommunication are glossed over in a sentence or two. Considering the script falls flat as often as not, it is a wonder it was penned by Peter Morgan, screenwriter for 2006’s well-received The Queen and The Last King of Scotland. Meanwhile, Portman unsurprisingly steals the show –much as she steals the king – from Johansson in nearly every scene they share.
This is not to suggest that the acting is unsatisfactory. On the contrary, this is a strong cast at the top of its game, but much as did Daniel Day Lewis’s powerful (and Oscar-winning) performance in There Will Be Blood, the acting suffers from a general lack of quality in every other aspect of the production.
Despite lavish sets and gaudy costumes for King Henry and his courtiers (designed by Sandy Powell, who won an Academy Award for the costumes she designed for Shakespeare in Love), the film is visually torpid. In Barry Lyndon, director Stanley Kubrick turned the film frame almost literally into a period painting, capturing static scenes of 18th century drama with slow reverse zooms to mimic the way a spectator views a canvas. Here, apart from one brilliantly handled execution scene which uses hand-held camera-work to draw the audience into the scene and its attendant sense of confused, urgent horror, the mise-en-scène stagnates. The colours, the castles and the costumes disappear into the background behind second-rate melodrama. What’s more, a large number of shots appear out of focus, leading one to wonder what possessed director Justin Chadwick to bring along cinematographer Kieran McGuigan, with whom he worked on the TV series Murder Prevention and Masterpiece Theatre’s serialized Bleak House.
Chadwick himself has produced a less than stellar silver screen debut with The Other Boleyn Girl. His previous credits are television productions without exception, and he appears decidedly out of his depth handling such a remarkable cast in the format of a long, unbroken narrative (the many hours of Bleak House were at least broken down into an episodic structure).
As a historical drama or a window to the past, or for that matter a visual feast of a period piece, The Other Boleyn Girl is sorely lacking. But as a showcase for the incredible acting range of Natalie Portman, who with great aplomb plays the demure lady, the jealous sister, the madwoman, the manipulator, and nearly every shade in between in the space of two hours; or as an unabashed melodrama – for those partial to such things – it is just about worth the price of admission to imagine what a visionary director and a more proficient crew might have done with the budget of $40 million (US) and this promising cast.