In the last decade, two of South America’s best directors (Pablo Larraín and Sebastian Lelio, both Chilean) made their English language debuts (“Jackie”, and “Disobedience”) with bold films about women resisting to be quelled by their historical and societal circumstances. I hoped that Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz, who has made an impressive career of Brazilian films since his directorial debut in 2001, would follow in their footsteps. Despite some thematic intrigue, and one excellent performance at its centre, “Firebrand” is a bit of a disappointment for Aïnouz, who directs an inconsistent film without only intermittent pleasures.
When Aïnouz’s previous film, “The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão”, premiered in 2019 it felt like the sign of a good director finally at the height of his great talent. The sweeping melodrama that traced the plight of two sisters in mid-century Brazil, was one of the best films of that year. Its account of the female struggles inherent in an uncaring world, made it one of the decade’s most clear-eyed feminist tales. On the surface, an adaptation of Elizabeth Fremantle revisionist feminist tale, “Queen’s Gambit” seemed like a natural extension. The novel, adapted by Henrietta Ashworth and Jessica Ashworth under the title “Firebrand”, is the story of Henry VIII and Catherine Parr’s last few years of marriage. Parr outlived the infamous King, and the ahistorical plot of the story gives her a feminist compulsion that makes sense for Aïnouz. But something gets lost in movement from conception to film. A lot of it feels tied to the tone of the adaptation.
Considering the inherently ahistorical revisionist tendency of the source, “Firebrand” feels immediately striking for its adaptation choices which seems unable to imagine the rhythms of this world without trapping it in an oppressive imitation of staid realism. We meet Catherine (Alicia Vikander), already Queen, in the final year of Henry’s reign. The primary complication is her religious fervour and her friendship with poet and preacher Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), who was condemned a heretic. Two early meetings between Doherty and Vikander and it’s clear that “Firebrand” expects to earn much of its thesis from those scenes. Vikander plays Catherine as intentionally muted, to hide the wheels turning in her head. But her approach feels out of step with Doherty in those early moments. The script can only write their relationship in the most superficial of ways, offering little for either performer to sustain the bond that is so critical. As time moves on, Catherine navigates a potential romance with Thomas Seymour, her important role as stepmother to the King’s children, including a precocious Princess Elizabeth who would become Elizabeth I, and a husband whose mistrust is encouraged by his court. There is a lot here that could be written to manifest as more eclectic and exciting. In action, though, the muted script finds Aïnouz too often restrained in his direction.
French cinematographer Hélène Louvart returns as his DP, and you can understand what compels the pair to represent the halls of the castle with an oppressive muddiness that seems to draw the life out of everything. Even extravagant dinners and would-be joyous garden parties feel devoid of true colour. So much of the performance in “Firebrand” seem to retain that same approach playing things that ought to be exciting and thrilling in a register that often struggles under the weight of a literal approach that gives diminishing returns.
What luck for the film, and the performers in it, though, that throughout the course of Catherine’s journey Jude Law appears as a fulsome, arrogant, slimy King and brings the actual bit of fiery magnetism that “Firebrand” needs. Film has not known quite what to do with an ageing Jude Law – his best work in the last decade is still his eclectic turn in Sorrentino’s criminally underseen “The Young Pope”, using both his ageing wisdom and his beauty to good effect. “Firebrand”, embracing an image of Henry as grotesque and repellent, offers Law a familiar playbook – playing disgusting and cantankerous – that many an ageing Brit has relished. But, even amidst the familiar shape of this Henry, Law is most impressive for the way he fully captures Henry’s vileness while still making us thrilled each time he appears on screen. When he is on screen, “Firebrand” is suddenly more thrilling and complicated. In their scenes together it is almost as if he’s pushing Vikander to thornier, better performances. A late film sequence at a garden party suddenly adds a jolt of thrilling tension into a film whose plot is part of popular history. A scene where the King flirts with a younger lady-in-waiting finds Vikander performing with a sense of clarity and specificity that feels absent in other sections when she is away from Law.
With Law, “Firebrand” is at least a suggestion that Aïnouz has retained his ability to direct an actor to good work, even if little else in the film seems to match the vividness of his films in other languages. I had the bad luck of seeing “Firebrand” a few days after seeing “Six”, the revisionist Broadway musical about all six of Henry’s wives. Parr is a highlight of that script which imagines her cleverness with much more acuity. It’s not so much Vikander’s fault that the script writes this compelling woman into a story of such muted sensibilities. And it’s a shame that its ostensible feminist leanings are found in a film where the King emerges as most exciting. Still, “Firebrand” is worth it just for the thrill of Jude Law’s performance all the way to the King’s bitter death.
Firebrand is available for purchase and rent on PrimeVideo, AppleTV and YouTube
