“Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded survived.” So goes the rhyme traditionally taught to young schoolchildren in the UK, introducing them to the iconoclastic early-modern King Henry VIII and the sad fates of his six wives, setting the table for the study of history overall. And European cinema seemingly can’t get enough of monarchism currently, with Maïwenn’s Jeanne du Barry [+lire aussi :
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bande-annonce
fiche film] opening this year’s Cannes, following up auteur and awards vehicles like The Favourite [+lire aussi :
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bande-annonce
fiche film], Corsage [+lire aussi :
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bande-annonce
interview : Marie Kreutzer
interview : Marie Kreutzer
fiche film] and Spencer [+lire aussi :
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bande-annonce
fiche film]. For his highest-profile project to date, Brazilian-Algerian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz is getting in on the trend with Firebrand [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], a suspenseful study of the “survived” part of that rhyme, with Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl [+lire aussi :
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interview : Paco Delgado
fiche film], Irma Vep [+lire aussi :
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interview : Olivier Assayas
fiche série]) playing the sixth wife, Catherine Parr, and Jude Law (The Talented Mr. Ripley and many recent studio franchise films) incarnating Henry VIII in what’s sure to be a physically transformative performance. The movie will screen in competition at next month’s Cannes Film Festival (see the news).

Adapted from Elizabeth Fremantle’s best-selling historical novel Queen’s Gambit by screenwriters Jessica and Henrietta Ashworth, the film takes as its main dramatic context Henry VIII’s vacillations of religion, which initially led to England’s break from Papal Italy and the Catholic Church, after which he resumed a largely pro-Catholic position. Parr’s primary motive for marrying Henry is to try and convert him, and the kingdom overall, to greater Protestant sympathies, and the story takes on a thriller- and horror-inflected tone as it tracks her “remarkable will to not only survive, but thrive” under the tyrannical king.

The cast also includes seasoned British thesps Sam Riley, Eddie Marsan and Simon Russell Beale, alongside newcomers Ruby Bengal and Erin Doherty. Hélène Louvart, one of the most highly respected working in her field, is director of photography, and Dickon Hinchcliffe, formerly of the British group Tindersticks, will deliver a surely lush musical score.

The film is a UK-US co-production, staged by producers Carolyn Marks Blackwood, of Magnolia Mae Film, and Gabrielle Tana, of Brouhaha Entertainment. Anna Sheehan, of MBK Productions, executive-produces. No sales agent has been announced yet.

Aïnouz had a belated career breakthrough with The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão [+lire aussi :
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interview : Karim Aïnouz
fiche film], the 2019 Cannes Un Certain Regard winner, which secured him the widest distribution of, and greatest acclaim for, any of his work to date. In a recent interview with Terra Brasil, translated from the Portuguese, he said, “It is an immense joy to be at Cannes again, a festival that has always accompanied my work and Brazilian cinema. Firebrand is the portrait of a unique woman, Catherine Parr, a visionary who changed the course of English history but never had her life told in the cinema, despite her immense and influential trajectory.”