CANNES 2023 - remote notes

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes...


JUDE LAW AND ALICIA VIKANDER

FIREBRAND ( Karim Aïnouz)
Peter Debruge, writing in Variety,disapproves of the way (he says) the Brazilian director's good-looking but overly grungy first English-language film, which feels unrelated to his other work, freely adapting Elizabeth Fremantle’s The Queen's Gambit about Henry VIII's last wife Catherine Parr (Alicia Vikander, weak and underused), chooses to grossly rewrite history to serve a modern agenda. With a full-on gross-out Jude Law as the fat, pustulent king who this version makes die in a way Henry VIII didn't, to suit modern ideas, with other ahistorical changes and puzzling omissions. In the past people were beheaded for such "flagrant disregard for the facts." Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review , seeming less aware of thE historical subtleties, goes easier on it ("a watchable piece of faux history") and gives it three stars. Lots of press so far and an 8-minute standing ovation but no US distributor pickup yet. In Competition.