We've seen the ads for this one -- a saucy little period piece based upon the the activities of Anne Boleyn, the 2nd wife of Henry VIII, and her sister, Mary. We first stumble upon the Boleyn brood as children playing in a field, where the clan patriarch notes that, while Mary is the younger and fairer, it is Anne who is more complex and due greater things.
Flash forward -- Mary(Scarlett Johansson) is married off to a merchant's son, while Anne(Natalie Portman) is asked to wait for her greatness. Word arrives that Henry's(Eric Bana) wife, Catherine of Aragon, has again failed to produced a male heir (important in an England not that far removed from civil war). It is presented that her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, first conceived of the idea to have Anne become Henry's mistress, to bend his ear to the families of Boleyn and Howard (the Duke of Norfolk's family name). They invite the king for a weekend ("hey, Hank, come on by, we'll shoot some deer and have a Bar-B-Q!"). However, it is not Anne but Mary who catches the King's attention.
Henry calls the family to court, and Mary clearly understands what is to happen. She protests initially, but, given the willingness of all, including her husband, she goes along with it, and eventually finds Henry to be "a gentle lover." She becomes pregnant, and happily so, but they has a risk to her pregnancy and is shut up for bedrest in her quarters.
Here, the family is concerned again. If Mary can't continue to sway the king, they will lose their standing. Da-dada-daa! - Anne is back in a flash, and sways the king successfully this time. However, she does have some backhistory now, which I will forgo here. Still, rather than be happy to share the king with a queen and her own sister, she holds out. She is the one who refuses to be with the king until she is his queen. She is the one who says to get rid of Catherine. She is the one who says, "Why must we answer to Rome?" and the pope. And she gets her way.
However, the higher you rise, the harder you fall. And a man never really changes. Anne is ill-received as queen, at best. She produces a daughter, Elizabeth, but no son. Henry's eyes wander, blah blah blah, off with her head (this is history, so if you didn't know this already, then you probably thought the Titanic wasn't going to sink either).
OK, so, to summarize -- a family encourages one daughter to have an affair with royalty; the second daughter then steals the royalty away from the first. There are affairs left and right, banishments from court, accusals of incest... all they needed was Anne to float above the bed and speak in the devil's voice, and it'd fit right into one of NBC's soaps. Sure, this was based, surprisingly, somewhat closely on real events, but that doesn't mean it's not trashy.
Past the storyline, the actors were chosen interestingly. Scarlett Johansson barely pulls off the British persona, probably as well as Natalie Portman (the former's resume may not be grand, but the later has demonstrated the ability to act previously). Besides which, who decided to cast 2 Americans in this British flick? Bana isn't given much to work with, as Henry is portrayed as a man led by his codpiece alone, with no political aspirations (really, the idea to break with the Catholic Church was all Anne's idea?); this is not withstanding the obvious discordance in appearance (they try to make Bana look bigger with period costumes that billow out, but this is destroyed in his love scene with Johansson when we get a clear view of his washboard abs). Kristen Scott Thomas, as the Lady Boleyn, and Ana Torrent, as Catherine of Aragon, do shine in their roles as matriarchs, though brief as these roles are.
The piece is laid out as a period piece, with the court and the sets made to mimic reality. Unfortunately, is produces a very darkly lit, dirty palette -- one which probably fits the story well, but actually makes it harder on the eyes. And the pacing, designed to fit years of history into 2 hours, is aggressive, which as times works to the film's favor, but at other trivializes these events of history. Even the end, where quiet and pause would have added greatly to the queen's execution, is pushed through.
I had been warned that the book was a piece of trashy pulp, and the movie lived up to the book. In fair credit, some will like the film, but for me, it wasn't worth it. Don't even bother with the rental.
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