Firebrand (Karim Aïnouz) & Emmanuelle (Audrey Diwan)

Firebrand is a pretty good but not completely convincing period drama, starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law, that tries to elevate Katherine Parr from pious sixth wife of Henry VIII to proto-feminist.

It’s based on a book called Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle, adapted by Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth, and directed by Karim Aïnouz (Invisible Life). Because of the success of the similarly titled Netflix chess series (starring Anya Taylor-Joy) a change in title was more or less inevitable. 

Firebrand sounds catchy enough, and Katherine Parr was quite passionate about her religious (Protestant) beliefs, which went against those of Henry VIII - who as head of the Anglican Church imagined himself to be the representation of God on earth - but the title doesn’t really do justice to the material on screen.

Katherine, as played by Vikander, is a rather demure figure, who tries to be as good a wife to the, by this late stage in his reign, horribly revolting King as humanly possible, while also being a fine stepmother to Henry’s children from previous marriages: Mary (Patsy Ferran), Elizabeth (Junia Rees) and Edward (Patrick Buckley), who would all at some point ascend to the throne (though not necessarily in that order).

The real firebrand of the movie - or at least the first twenty minutes - is Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), a Protestant preacher who wanted Bibles to be available in English, so that everyone could read them and make up their own minds about what was in the holy book. 

For her sins, Anne was burned at the stake, but not before she was given a piece of royal jewelry by Katherine, an act of high treason that could put the queen’s head on the chopping block, a fate that also - for different reasons, like adultery - befell Anne Boleyn (wife 2) and Katherine Howard (wife 5).

It’s the set up for a mostly engaging period drama that takes elements from the political thriller genre to add to the intrigue that was already rife at the royal court. 

Bishop Gardiner (Simon Russell-Beale) wants to convince Henry that Katherine is just as bad as his previous wives, while the brothers Tomas Seymour (Sam Riley) and Edward (Eddie Marsan) have their reasons to support Katherine - at least up to a certain point, their main concern being their nephew Edward and his position as Henry’s possible successor.

Katherine’s main allies are her ladies-in-waiting Ellen (Bryony Hannah) and Cat (Ruby Bentall), who are not afraid to risk their own lives trying to save Katherine’s.

Director Karim Aïnouz makes the sixteenth century come alive in a convincing fashion, using natural lighting for the interior scenes and colorful fabrics that come alive in the outdoor scenes. 

Firebrand is not as easily accessible as more regular costume dramas, but neither is it as modernist as movies like The Favorite, even though some of the dialogue sounds a little too ‘of the current moment’ for me. 

The movie tells a complicated and at times slightly convoluted story. It also  takes some liberties with historical facts, one poignant one being that Katherine Parr and Anne Askew were never as close as the movie would like us to believe.

Firebrand eventually positions itself as a prequel to the modern classic Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, more or less suggesting that Katherine Parr was the role model that Elizabeth build her empire on. 

Even if that were true, at these moments you feel the movie striving for a sense of importance that remains just out of reach.

Alicia Vikander is mostly fine as Katherine, even though she is upstaged every time Jude Law enters the frame: he turns Henry into such a bizarrely grotesque (and extremely toxic) figure that it becomes more and more like living with a monster. 

Which in turn leads to an ending that can only be described as a classic example of ‘speculative fiction’.

Katherine Parr may or may not have been more of a rebel than history once made her out to be, but if Firebrand’s portrait of Henry VIII proves anything it’s that old adage that says ‘power corrupts - and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’

I give it 3 1/2 stars.

Note: Firebrand premiered in competition at the Cannes film festival. Since then it has played the festival circuit and was released theatrically in a fair number of countries. It is released in the Netherlands later this week.

Emmanuelle is Audrey Diwan’s somewhat serious but also somewhat half-hearted reimagining of the original skin flick starring Sylvia Kristel. 

Forty years after the first movie became a worldwide phenomenon, the sad fact is that even a new Emmanuelle movie - arthouse aspirations aside - is basically just another IP play for the sake of IP. 

It must have been hard for writer-director Audrey Diwan (the acclaimed abortion drama L'événement) and co-writer Rebecca Zlotowski - an excellent filmmaker herself - to get it right, in a time when movies for adults are not really supposed to be erotic anymore.

Of course there is some nudity, just as there are some sex scenes, but it all feels pretty sterile, just like the art direction and the cinematography.

This time around Emmanuelle is played by Noémie Merlant (Tár, The Innocent), an excellent French actress who in this movie doesn’t really get to show off her natural exuberance. 

‘You’re a bit stiff,’ she is told by the mysterious Kei (Will Sharpe), ‘and a little ironic.’ And even though it’s obviously a conscious decision by Diwan to make her leading lady act this way, it’s also a bit of a shame. 

Then again, for most of the movie, Emmanuelle isn’t a very happy bunny. She works as quality controller for a firm that owns a group of five star hotels.

Her day-to-day job is to fly to exotic places like Hong Kong and make sure the local staff, led by Margot (Naomi Watts), is doing everything they can to provide guests with the best possible hotel experience. 

What a life! you may think, but all that luxury doesn’t really satisfy her. So she has sex, both with hotel guests and a female escort who uses the hotel to prowl the guests.

‘You are a stickler for the rules,’ Kei informs her. ‘But you don’t really like to follow them yourself.’ That may be true, but ‘the sadness is mine’ she tells him, after describing in great detail what it was like for her to have sex on an airplane with a total stranger.

At one point in the movie it dawns on her that her boss just wants her to give him a reason to fire Margot. So she decides to stick it to the patriarchy.

Emmanuelle finally comes to life when she decides to leave the hotel to go and find Kei in a more seedy part of town. 

Even though the movie never becomes the (tragic) love story it could have been, that last half hour is mostly ‘good, actually’.

Suddenly highly atmospheric and yes, much more cinematic, it plays like a mixture of Claire Denis and Wong Kar-wai showing what the movie might have been had it been made as a highly charged erotic drama instead of a middling Emmanuelle movie. 

I give it 2 1/2 stars.

Note: The new Emmanuelle recently premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival. It is released theatrically this week in France, Spain, Belgium and The Netherlands.