After Johnny Depp's Louis XV, the Cannes Film Festival rolled out the red carpet Sunday to Henry VIII of England, embodied by a Jude Law metamorphosed into a jealous and paranoid king. If the "Beloved" of Jeanne du Barry is not unanimous, some critics pointing out the few sentences uttered by the ex-Pirate of the Caribbean, Firebrand (The Queen's Game) by Karim Aïnouz, presented in competition, is a fresco that should leave its royal mark on the Croisette, thanks in particular to the striking performance of Jude Law.
The Tudor dynasty has been an infinite source of inspiration for the big and small screen, but very few evoke, like Firebrand, the fate of Catherine Parr, the sixth and last wife of the king. Like straight out of Hans Holbein's paintings, the film offers a beautiful play of lights and colors, often with freeze-frames on Jude Law and Alicia Vikander, who lends her features to Catherine Parr.
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« Anthem against patriarchy »
Jude Law is almost unrecognizable as Henry VIII who, at the end of his life, had become obese, lame due to a leg infection.
The actor manages, as in a dark fairy tale, to make very real Henry VIII, this Bluebeard who repudiated two of his wives (Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves), beheaded two others (Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard) and lost another in childbirth (Jane Seymour).
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I didn't know anything about the House of Tudor but it was the character of Catherine Parr that motivated me because no one had made a film about her. It was always about the wives who died and not the one who survived, or about the king, who was a monster," Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz told AFP.
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Jude Law really tried to embody the physique of Henry VIII. He walked for months with weights on his legs... He had back pain after filming so much he imitated the king's limp," he says, adding that the actor also read about twenty books on the monarch to appropriate the character.
In the film, described by Ainuz as a "hymn against patriarchy", Henry VIII goes into a black rage when Bishop Stephen Gardiner manages to convince him that the Queen actively supports the "new faith", at a time when the Protestant faith was gaining ground in England.
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We've been there before. ", he keeps repeating, the film skilfully showing how doubts gradually creep into his mind. The rest of the cast is top-notch, including Alicia Vikander as a queen with a reputation for calming the king's stormy temper.
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She was an extremely intelligent woman (...) who survived a tyrant. I can't imagine what it was like for her," the actress, known for playing an android in Ex Machina, told AFP.
She says Jude Law's acting was so impressive that it was marked by scenes where the king "prowls around" her or looks at her differently, rather than violent scenes.
The film details her sympathy for Anne Asqew, a Protestant poet who will be burned at the stake for heresy. While there is no historical evidence, Firebrand shows encounters between them and the queen's clear adherence to reformist ideas, especially in a scene where she is seen praying in English and not in Latin, one of the pillars of Protestantism.
Was it risky for a Brazilian director of Algerian origin to embark on a film about the English monarchy? "When Americans make a film about Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor, you don't ask yourself the question," he smiles.