The Queen’s Game (Firebrand): portrait of a queen on fire
Four years after winning the Un Certain Regard award for his film The invisible life of Eurídice Gusmãodirector Karim Aïnouz returns to the Cannes Film Festival, this time in competition, with his new feature film The Queen’s Game (brand of fire) worn by Alicia Vikander and Jude Law.
Adapted from the novel Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle released in 2013, the film is set in the sixteenth century, in the bloody England of the Tudors. Catherine Parr, sixth and last wife of King Henry VIII, was appointed queen regent during the king’s military campaigns.
With this interim role, he tries to influence the court towards a future based on his Protestant beliefs. Upon her return, the King, increasingly paranoid and ill, accuses a childhood friend of his wife of treason and sends her to the stake. Horrified and secretly in mourning, Catherine fights for her own survival where the slightest misstep on her part could get her executed when she only dreams of a kingdom without tyranny.
The life and reign of King Henry VIII has already been brought to the screen many times, the most famous variation being the series The Tudorsaired from 2007 to 2010. For connoisseurs, The Queen’s Game resumes the events that appeared in the last two episodes of the series and then tells the last moments of Henry VIII.
Check mate
A shadowy figure, Catherine Parr nonetheless had a great influence on the history of England. During the three months of absence of Henry VIII, who left for France on military operations, she so reigned over the country and he took up royal duties with great strength of character and courage.
This is exactly what Karim Aïnouz wanted to highlight in the film The Queen’s Game which turns out to be a touching tribute to that great historical figurethat despite threats to her life, she never stopped believing in her beliefs and knew, like a formidable chess player, how to move her pawns to achieve her goals.
A survival in the mysteries of history
If only appearing late on the screen, the sinister shadow of Henry VIII imposes itself from the very beginning, insidious, from the very first images of the film, especially through his many orphans of mothers, all performed by order of the kingtrue Bluebeard of English royal history.
Obsessed with his fortune, Henry VIII measures his wife’s worth only by her ability to bear him an heir. Thereby, as Catherine’s spirit lifts, constantly returns her to her female state through her body. This is why her umpteenth miscarriage would seem to condemn her definitively.
Then, when this event happens, the feature film switches to another dimension, that of historical survival. sometimes watching horror. Indeed, in addition to the masterful presence of Jude Law, who brilliantly embodies the figure of the ogre who decomposes from within, Karim Aïnouz transforms him into a nightmarish creature, an insatiable, seemingly invincible bogeyman. With every second of the King’s life, it is Catherine’s that shrinks, until a final confrontation, which she might have been suffocating if we hadn’t known the outcome beforehand.
In this feature film where we vibrate with rage next to this great heroine, it’s hard not to see a mirror of our current society, where the place of women and their freedom is constantly questioned. behind the great cinematography of Hlève Louvard where every shot seems to come out of a 16th century painting, the subject of the film is resolutely current.
The Queen’s Game will be released soon in theaters in France, distributed by ARP.
Source: Cine Serie
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