Jude Law outrageously steals every scene as a horrendously unwell and cross Henry VIII in this Tudor court intrigue drama that also serves as an amusing noir counterfactual, adapted by the screenwriters Jessica and Henrietta Ashworth from the novel by Elizabeth Fremantle and directed by the Brazilian film-maker Karim Aïnouz, making his English-language feature debut.
It’s all about the king’s tense relationship with his sixth and final queen, Catherine Parr, played with creamy, inscrutable placidity by Alicia Vikander. The king’s bedchamber is perfumed by the pus splurging from Henry’s bloated and ulcerated legs as the doctor changes his bandages, getting thumped and screamed at by the royal patient. This Henry is peevish and cantankerous. And we at one stage get a full-on shot of His Majesty’s pale, fleshy bum as he has conjugal relations with Catherine – like the giant, shaved arse of a sheep. Did Law use a buttock double for this stomach-turning image? But there is something deeply disturbing and abusive about Henry’s violent behaviour: misogyny and coercive control we might call it now, and Henry didn’t have to remind his wives that the scaffold awaited them.
