Review: The Lost King — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

This decidedly friendly movie from director Stephen Frears tells the true story of a woman determined to rehabilitate the image of England’s notorious King Richard III.

IFC Films

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The Lost King

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Rating: PG-13

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

Stars: Sally Hawkins, Steve Coogan, Harry Lloyd

Writers: Steve Coogan, Philippa Langley, Jeff Pope

Director: Stephen Frears

Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival

Nothing drives a movie like a good old-fashioned obsession: Jimmy Stewart’s blonde fixation in Vertigo; Glenn Close’s killer crush on Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction; Richard Dreyfuss’s fluted mashed potatoes fetish in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to name a few.

The obsession at the heart of The Lost King, a decidedly friendly movie from director Stephen Frears, ignites nothing near the fireworks of those other films. But the true story of a woman determined to rehabilitate the image of England’s notorious King Richard III is in its own way compelling; simmering at a comfortable slow burn thanks to an endearing cast and a whimsical script.

Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water) stars as Philippa Langley, a British marketing executive struggling with chronic fatigue syndrome, who happens upon some revisionist accounts of Richard III — the guy Shakespeare portrayed as a villainous hunchback who killed his own young nephews in order to assure himself the Crown.

Convinced Richard has gotten a raw deal for all these centuries, Philippa starts devouring everything she can find about him. Legend long held that the king, killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field, was unceremoniously dumped off a bridge. But from unearthed documents and old maps Philippa determines that he was, instead, buried in the garden of a man in Leicester. Summoning her diminishing strength, Philippa starts pestering university and city officials to let her head up an excavation under the parking lot where she believes Richard lies.

Philippa is cautiously encouraged by her ex-husband, John (played with endless goodwill by the film’s co-writer, Steve Coogan), who wishes her well but who is also keenly aware that Philippa is imperiling her marketing career, which helps support their two sons.

In a fanciful twist, Philippa finds less ambivalent support from Richard III himself (Harry Lloyd), who periodically appears to her in full royal regalia, sometimes from a distance, occasionally up close. It’s a risky narrative tack, bordering on twee, but Frears modulates those moments perfectly. The ghost of Richard never overstays his welcome, and it’s a sweet reminder of just how real the ancient king has become to this very 21st century woman.

There is perhaps no actress more adept at conjuring a sense of curious wonder than Hawkins. With eyes like tea saucers and a frame delicate as Wedgwood china, she nevertheless has a way of fixing her jaw with Iron Lady determination. When Hawkins’s Philippa faces down the university eggheads, who insist Richard’s remains will never be found, there is never any doubt of how this is going to turn out.

Frears, who collaborated with Coogan on 2013’s Philomena, has shown a special knack for bringing strong-willed women to the screen in films like Dangerous Liaisons, The Queen, and Florence Foster Jenkins, to name a handful. Philippa may not seem as imposing as those other characters, but Frears succeeds in casting her physical frailty as simply another unfair obstacle she must heroically overcome.

The release of The Lost King in the United Kingdom engendered a firestorm among those same ivory tower elites, furious that the film portrays them as usurpers of Philippa Langley’s rightful glory. But the record seems to support Frears & Co.’s assertion that Langley was pushed aside from the moment the discovery was made (and even before, since her name was intentionally left off the excavation permit).

There is probably some merit to both versions of the story. After all, despite new discoveries about Richard III, many of the age-old legends about him have turned out to be absolutely authentic. For example, despite Philippa’s speculation that Richard’s physical deformity may have been a fictionalized manifestation of his supposed evilness, examination of the king’s skeleton confirmed that he was, indeed, misshapen.

No matter. When The Lost King’s Richard appears to Philippa one final time, he remains unbent; gallantly sitting astride his steed.

Our preferred version of history, it seems, remains indelible. Even when we know better.

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