Where <em>Mary Queen of Scots</em> Goes Wrong
Starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie, the film reduces the arcane details of centuries-old diplomacy to a personal beef between two celebrities.
A 2018 film set centuries ago in Britain’s royal halls of power, a period piece laden with the requisite opulent costumes and set dressing, also does something new with the genre: interrogating the sexist limits on what women in this world could achieve. That movie, Yorgos Lanthimos’s , is about Queen Anne; it’s in theaters now and is well worth seeing. Mere weeks after that film’s release comes a similar work, this time examining two of Britain’s most significant female rulers. But while Josie Rourke’s is sumptuous and) indulges in every threadbare period-film trope.
