Fact, fiction, and feeling collide and combine in Stephen Frears’ “The Lost King,” written by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, an adaptation of the book “The Lost King: The Search for Richard III.” This unique and lively mystery based on a true story comes from the team behind the Oscar-nominated “Philomena,” and it takes much the same approach, centering the story of a British woman embarking on a nigh-impossible search for a man, assisted in some way by a kind, yet put-upon, Coogan.
While Judi Dench’s Philomena sought her long-lost son, Sally Hawkins’ Philippa seeks a long-lost king, Richard III, trapped in the amber of our collective imaginations as the titular evil anti-hero of Shakespeare’s play. Philippa, a middle-aged woman in Edinburgh with two boys, a faltering marriage to John (Coogan), a dead-end sales job and a challenging diagnosis of ME/CFS (otherwise known as chronic fatigue syndrome), becomes inspired by the story of Richard III at a local production of the play she has to attend for her son’s school.
Struggling to be taken seriously at home and work despite her physical condition, she relates to Richard’s struggle with his own disability (his “hunchback”), and objects to his villainous depiction. Philippa sets out to discover the truth about Richard’s life and story, embarking on a research journey that lands her in a car park in Leicester, England, uncovering and rewriting history with her own intuition.
