Film Review: Ophelia

Ridley, in her first proper starring role away from the whole silly Star Wars machine, is the main reason to sit through this US/UK co-production drawn from a 2006 book by Lisa Klein –even if her Ophelia looks and sounds far too modern. And clean.

As a kid Ophelia (here played by Mia Quiney) is allowed to run wild because her widowed (and ill-fated) Dad Polonius (Dominic Mafham) can barely care for her, and after causing a fuss in the presence of Queen Gertrude (Naomi Watts), she’s taken in as a lady-in-waiting and becomes quite the favourite until the mechanics of the play properly kick in. Hamlet (played as a young man by George MacKay) then returns to find that his father is dead and his snarky uncle Claudius (Clive Owen) has, of course, seized the throne, and his dull response is to agonise weakly instead of brood intensely like most Hamlets.

Cod-Shakespearean dialogue continues as the plot takes an infuriating turn, with Gertrude sending the adult Ophelia into the forest to acquire a potion that might help restore the Queen’s youth, and said witch (or ‘mystic’) turns out to be Mechtild (apparently a genuine historical figure) and also played, in a pretentiously actory bit of business, by Watts. Hamlet then winds up hopelessly smitten with Ophelia and treating her like crap in the accepted fashion, and while she does love him a fair bit she’s also, it seems, not sticking around to get herself killed, even as he obviously steers himself to his own foolish demise.

With fair cinematography by director McCarthy’s husband Denson Baker, another hammy performance by the terminally typecast Tom Felton (as Laertes) and a voiceover narration by Ridley that sounds nothing like a woman of the time, this isn’t really comparable to other Hamlet-rethinking texts like Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, which was a fatalistically absurdist comedy and nothing like this flawed, wannabe-empowering drama.

Ridley gives a fabulous performance, but the question remains: to see, or not to see?

Ophelia (M) is in cinemas now