March 6th, 2008

This might seem like an historical film but The Other Boleyn Girl is much too concerned with personal relationships to care about events beyond its characters. The film tells the story of Anne Boleyn and her sister Mary, whose desires for love and marriage are corrupted when Henry VIII crosses their paths. As a tale of sisters navigating vice and folly in the name of courtship one might liken it to Jane Austen but the film is too sensational to have anything valuable to say about morality. What this film is, is a soap opera. It’s Crossroads with costumes, Emmerdale with farthingales, and if you take it on that level you may well enjoy it.

The plot is ridiculous. Its development is the dramatic equivalent to action films which start with a fist fight and ends with a fighter jets, each scene has to top the previous one. The bond between the kind and innocent Mary (Scarlett Johansson), and the older and wiser sister Anne (Natalie Portman) is proven to be pure sentimentality and instantly forgotten. They’re soon duelling for the affections of the king despite the fact that Mary’s supposed to be happily married and Anne resentful at being pimped out to Henry by her father and uncle. Where their ambition comes from is mystery but it’s enough to prompt a sisterly one-upmanship that escalates to the English reformation and beyond.

And it really is that simple. If The Other Boleyn Girl is to be taken in anyway as accurate, Henry VIII had England quit the Catholic Church because Anne Boleyn made him horny but wouldn’t put out until she was made queen. In this sequence, the idea of a male heir isn’t even mentioned; it’s all about King Henry getting his end away. But this isn’t even the most outrageous scenario. When Anne miscarries, she suggests that her brother re-impregnate her before anyone notices.

That The Other Boleyn Girl is too wrapped up with its own plot to bother with any greater theme or subtext is perhaps its saving grace. Were it attempting to be anything other than a bodice-ripping romp, it would have a lot to answer for.

Much as been made of ‘foreigners’ being cast in the three main roles of this British film, but the casting is one of the film’s strongest elements. Scarlett Johansson has never projected an air of intelligence or authority but this makes her Hollywood’s leading innocent. Here, her round-faced purity is used to excellent effect. Meanwhile, the angular Natalie Portman is equally successful as the confident and calculating femme fatale. Australian Eric Bana, best known for playing violent gangster Chopper Read and The Incredible Hulk, goes against both his own and Henry VIII’s stereotyping and plays the king as a man-child spoilt by privilege, pathetic and easily manipulated. British actor David Morrissey deserves special mention. His turn as the fiendish Uncle Boleyn is extravagant in its anger and bluntness and seems to be tuned into the sensationalism and melodrama that this pantomime of a film really is.

Posted on March 6th, 2008 by Truphtooph
Filed under: Film