Lets Cut Off All Of Their Heads (from This Is Local London)

Film of the week
The Other Boleyn Girl (12A)
Star rating: **
Dir: Justin Chadwick
With: Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, Kristin Scott Thomas

Contrary to boasting in some quarters, sex was invented not in the Sixties but in the 16th century. Irrefutable proof of this arrives in Justin Chadwick's movie, The Other Boleyn Girl. Far from a chilly time of no central heating and no funny business, his period drama shows the 1500s to have been one big Carry On film. Furthermore, having gazed for near two hours at the faces of its stars Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, it can also be revealed that ye olde shoppes of the time sold waterproof mascara and lippy.

Enough. Whenever Hollywood stars do history the temptation to nit-pick is irresistible. While The Other Boleyn Girl is hardly a documentary, its screenwriter Peter Morgan, Oscar-nominated for The Queen, is nobody's fool.

The basic structure of Anne Boleyn's life is as set out here. What irritates like a hair-lined bodice is the soapy, soft-focus telling of the tale and the film's lack of any cinematic ambition. This is history writ very small indeed. Instead of a majestic romp using every inch of the big screen, it would not look out of place in BBC1's Sunday evening schedule. Given it was co-made with BBC Films, and largely shot in Britain, that's where it will doubtless end up.

Basing his screenplay on the bestseller by Philippa Gregory, Morgan wastes no time in setting up the story. He opens with a brown-haired child, Anne, and her blonde sister, Mary, frolicking in the sunlight.

A picture of innocence, but as one observer remarks: "To get ahead in this world, you need a lot more than fair looks and a kind heart."

Fast forward to the girls as women, and Mary (Johansson) has stolen a march on her older sister Anne (Portman) by marrying first. Feeling left out, and under pressure to shoehorn in the reason for the film's title, Anne jests: "I am the other Boleyn girl."

She is not to be outdone for long. Summoned before her father, Anne is told that "an opportunity has arisen." The king, Henry VIII, is in need of a distraction from his failing marriage. He wouldn't be averse, either, to a male heir. Lest we forget that women in this society are goods to be traded for favour, Kristin Scott Thomas, playing the girls' mother, pops up throughout to remind us.

In a series of electrifying interventions it is the older English actress, far more than the Hollywood tottie, who functions as the movie's feminist conscience.

Before Anne can take up her new role, circumstances bring her sister to the king's attention. So begins a rivalry between the pair that will last a lifetime. Husbands, homes, babies - all will take second place to the triangular relationship between the Boleyn girls and the king, played here by Eric Bana of Hulk and Munich fame. Once you've been a bare-chested brute and ruthless assassin I don't suppose it's that much of a leap to play Henry VIII, and so it seems. When he is not entertaining ladies in his bedchamber, Bana spends his time striding down corridors, scowling. By my reckoning he chalks up at least a half marathon. Shame he wasn't sponsored for charity.

David Morrissey, playing the girls' scheming uncle, devotes an equal amount of energy to sneering and spouting cliches. It's Morrissey who is handed that dreadful old line: "These are difficult times." If I had a groat for every time I heard that in a costume romp I'd raise more money than a sponsored Eric Bana.

The film's main focus, naturally, is its young ladies. Johansson takes her role as the meeker sister to extremes, blending so far into the background you sometimes forget she's there. She balances Portman's fiery Anne nicely though, and the two together create just enough of a spark to make you believe that, appearances to the contrary, they might just be sisters. Bana doesn't connect with either, preferring to exist in his own acting universe.

All three seem too big a presence for the film they're in. Chadwick's career so far has been spent in television, and it shows. Asked to think bigger he's unsure what to do; hence the endless racing down corridors. His limitations are apparent in other ways. The great unwashed of England don't put in an appearance until near the end of the film, and then only in embarrassingly small numbers.

Overall, the story of Anne Boleyn, her sister and the king is reduced to glossy soap opera or tabloid sex scandal. All that's missing is a spinning newspaper with the headline: Royal Love Rat Beds Sisters. ("He's done the dirty on us both," blonde sobs. "Am I for the chop?" bleats brunette.) Ever keen to educate, the film ends by telling us what became of the main characters. I don't think it's spoiling things to say that Anne gave birth to a daughter called Elizabeth who became queen. See Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, for more details. Natalie Portman giving birth to Cate Blanchett. Hollywood and history, eh?

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