The Other Boleyn Girl + Becoming Jane

I saw The Other Boleyn girl a week ago with Kathleen and I really, really enjoyed it. The Tudor period of England has always been one of my favorite historical eras so it was definitely a fun and interesting couple of hours. Phillipa Gregory's take on the story of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII isn't exactly historically accurate, but interesting and appealing enough for me to want to pick up the book in the near future.

It was a well-shot movie with visually pleasing sets, scenery, and costumes (the one notable exception being the necklace Anne spent most of the movie wearing that looked like it was stolen right off of Betty Suarez's neck). The storyline was fairly interesting, but what I found most compelling about the film were the characters and the interpretive decisions the actors made in portraying them. I think every actor did a fine job, but I'd like to make special note of Jim Sturgess and Natalie Portman. Jim Sturgess played George Boleyn, and he's probably most well-known for his portrayal of Jude in Across The Universe, a movie I have just recently fallen head over heels in love with, so it was a pretty delightful surprise to see his name up on the screen during the opening credits. He was great. I think I'm officially a fangirl. In the book, Phillipa Gregory chose to portray George as a homosexual, which the movie hinted at but never directly stated, and I thought Jim Sturgess did a good job of layering the nuances of that in very sutble ways. And Natalie Portman is just good in everything, isn't she? Well, "Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo..." aside... ;-) What I really loved about her performance was the way she made Anne cruel and calculating and harsh but absolutely sympathetic all at the same time. I felt sorry for Anne and the way her life never seemed to go her own way, and all throughout the film you could just feel her desperation to have some semblance of control over the things that were happening to her and around her. Very nicely done.

I was, however, not as pleased with Becoming Jane, which I watched last night. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate this movie, I just didn't love it. I'm actually rather conflicted as to what rating I should give it on Netflix, which doesn't happen very often. The problem with this movie was that it was well acted, well shot, and well done in terms of props and costuming and location, but the script was just somewhat disappointing. The movie bordered on downright boring in parts, but mostly I couldn't invest myself in a love story that felt like it had no natural progression. I'm not talking about the instantaneousness of "movie love", but when Jane and Tom Lefroy finally gave in to their feelings for each other, it felt forced and unnatural, which is weird because the actors had great chemistry! I don't know, man. Like I said, I think the script was really at fault here. Even the sub-plots felt tacked on. It's an interesting idea, the never-married Jane Austen falling in love in her youth and being inspired to write her great novels by a love that could never come to frutition, but the script just fell flat. There were some good moments, though, and it was worth seeing once. I always enjoy a little bit of Maggie Smith being a cranky British woman in my life.