The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

Idea: Seeing a chance to swoop into a power vacuum, Thomas Boleyn (Mark Rylance) encourages his eldest daughter Anne (Natalie Portman) to catch the eye of King Henry VIII (Eric Bana) during a visit. But when Anne out rides Henry during a hunt, his attentions turn to Mary (Scarlett Johansson), Anne's younger and married sister. Exiled to France, Anne returns a changed woman, and she sets out to win the King for herself.

Philippa Gregory's best selling novel has the impressive pedigree of having been adapted for the screen by Peter Morgan. Not only did he pen two of 2006's best reviewed movies, but he also wrote the 2003 mini-series Henry VIII, starring Ray Winstone. All in all, I'd say he knows his stuff.

It also has powerful, impassioned performances going for it. This is the best Johansson that we've seen since Ghost World. Her heart and face are open and exposed for the camera. It's a delicate performance, to make Mary chafe against her oppression and grow up, and it's one suited to Johansson's talents.

Portman is, as always, a working wonder. Anne goes from schoolgirl to vamp to beaten down in so short a time, and Portman carries it off with natural grace. It's too bad she's not much of a yeller, though. She gets a bit raspy at times.

Bana is also quite good, although I feel like he plays two Henrys instead of one. It's not that either isn't believable or well done; it's not even that the first Henry couldn't turn into the second. It's more that we are missing a scene or two that would make the transition easier to swallow.

That's the problem, really, with this adaptation: it can't decide what it wants to be. It can't decide if it wants to be about Mary or about Mary and Anne, and it suffers for it. The focus on Mary suggests that it is the former, as well as the fact that we see and hear nothing of Anne when she is in France. But later in the movie we are treated to scenes involving only Anne that we know right well Mary has no knowledge of. Because of those scenes, it feels like screentime is lost to other important aspects of Mary's story, like when, exactly, she fell in love with Henry (her admission comes out of left field) and what became of her husband.

Largely, though, the movie suffers under Justin Chadwick's ridiculously over the top dramatic direction. Give it a rest with the pathetic fallacy and tell me how you get the light to caress Portman's neck like that, would ya? B-