This uneven English-language period drama focuses on the exploits of the brilliant, unconventional Swedish monarch, Queen Kristina. The role of Kristina, previously played by Greta Garbo in Queen Christina (1933) and Liv Ullmann in The Abdication (1974), here goes to Malin Buska, who does little to elevate the film from its soapy, small-screen approach. It is thuddingly unsubtle. Kristina’s fascinating transgressive flip of accepted gender roles is reduced to a spot of sword fighting and a bi-curious tumble with favoured lady in waiting Belle (Sarah Gadon). This is a story crying out for an approach as daring, experimental and iconoclastic as its subject – something like Sally Potter’s take on the similarly themed Orlando. Instead, we get lots of smouldering, lip-chewing and interminable court intrigue.
