red joan movie review guardian

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Red Joan review – Judi Dench underused in brittle defector drama

Trevor Nunn’s film about ‘granny spy’ Melita Norwood aims for The Imitation Game-style spring, but squanders its greatest acting asset

T his 40s period piece tootles picturesquely along like a cold war, heterosexual version of The Imitation Game , the biopic of wartime codebreaker Alan Turing. There is the same prestige Britpic furniture: clipped vowels, kindly officer-class boffins, sexy smoulderers, brilliant women patronised by pipe-smoking, pint-quaffing chaps, illicit (straight) relationships in cramped rooms with a sixpence for the meter.

Red Joan is adapted by screenwriter Lindsay Shapero from Jennie Rooney’s 2013 novel, and directed by Trevor Nunn; the story is inspired by the case of Melita Norwood , the scientific researcher who was in 1999 unmasked as a Soviet spy. The film gives its “Red Joan” a conventionally glamorous Apostle-style career in Cambridge University that Norwood didn’t have, along with a much less ideological, more mainstream-friendly approach to cold war politics. Judi Dench is Joan in old age, a dithery but lucid old lady who is suddenly brought in for questioning by Special Branch officers who have been astonished to find her name in files handed over by a recent Soviet defector.

The questioning of course triggers extended flashback sequences at Cambridge, in which Sophie Cookson plays Young Joan, rather as Kate Winslet played young Iris Murdoch to Judi Dench’s old Iris in the 2001 film of the same name . Joan is the delectable naif who is dazzled by worldly, sophisticated student Sonja (Tereza Srbova) and through her makes the acquaintance of super-sexy Leo (Tom Hughes), a charismatic communist who appears nonetheless pro-war, an atypical defiance of the party line, which is a bit of historical fudging. While later working in the secret atomic research facility, she falls for attractive older professor Max (Stephen Campbell Moore), and is sufficiently horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki to want to turn over Britain’s nascent secrets to the Soviets.

Red Joan has a valid point to make: some spies were not pro-communist so much as pro-balance, pro-Mutually Assured Destruction, pro-peace. This is the case with Red Joan (though perhaps not quite with Norwood). But this story, though competently told, is brittle and cliched. Quite simply, there is not enough Dench, not enough Old Joan, not enough about how she feels about the decades of deceit, and tension, and becalmed ordinariness, far from the drama of espionage.

• Drama films
• Period and historical films
• Trevor Nunn

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, black writers week.

Now streaming on:

A based-on-a-true-story spy thriller, Trevor Nunn ’s conventional yet sneakily absorbing “Red Joan” eases into the familiar mold of “ The Imitation Game ” at once. As it toggles between two separate eras, Nunn’s period piece frames its story by introducing us to the 80-something Joan Stanley ( Judi Dench ) first. She lives a quiet life in a British suburb and tends to the cookie-cutter demands of her uneventful days in the early 2000s. Except, this simple old woman (whose story is based on the real-life case of Southeast London’s Melita Norwood) doesn’t seem to be all that ordinary—soon enough, the British Secret Service pulls her out of her quiet retirement and arrests her on the grounds of treason. But did she really commit those crimes and give away Britain’s secrets to the Russians as a KGB spy in the 1930s?

The pull of “Red Joan”—an adaptation of Jennie Rooney’s bestselling novel by screenwriter Lindsay Shapero —oddly isn’t in the search and reveal of an answer to this question. Admittedly, the expected attributes of a slick espionage thriller (like globe-trotting mystique and heart-pumping moments of suspense) aren’t great in number here. Instead, Nunn’s film works better as a period melodrama and I don’t mean this as a slight at all. Unapologetically feminine in the vein of Lone Scherfig ’s overlooked gem “ Their Finest ,” “Red Joan” resolves into a genuine study of an intelligent and ideologically budding young woman. As the old Joan settles into an interrogation session in a drab room (and repeatedly denies every accusation), the film’s lengthy flashbacks chart Joan’s opinionated past in thoughtful increments. Nunn swiftly takes us back in time to 1938, when Joan (a gracefully convincing Sophie Cookson ) was a green but genius physics student at Cambridge, grabbing onto new inspirations and expanding her political horizon while growing into her sexuality.

The initial catalyst to Joan’s awakening enters her life through an open window. To work around the strict curfew of her dorm, the confident Sonia (Tereza Srbova) climbs into Joan’s room with movie-star glamour and in due course, introduces Joan to her fiery cousin Leo ( Tom Hughes ), a dedicated communist like herself. Allured by their world of ideas around societal justice—and equally swept away by the noisemaker Leo, who patronizingly calls her “my little comrade”—Joan joins in their meetings and rallies against Hitler. The advancing timeline gently pushes Leo out of the picture and introduces a new partner-in-crime/love-interest for Joan, the gentlemanly professor Max Davis ( Stephen Campbell Moore ). Working out of a government laboratory and eventually becoming lovers during a perilous cross-Atlantic trip, the duo shares a joint view of the world but differs in their respective implementations. Further muddying the waters is Max’s marriage and inability to get a divorce from his wife.

It would be too easy to dismiss the romantic entanglements of “Red Joan” as fluff, but along with screenwriter Shapero, Nunn treats Joan’s affairs with the respect they deserve, while never losing sight of her as an intellectual. A virgin until she gets involved with Max—thankfully, the film doesn’t brush over a very crucial sex scene—Joan matures in her dealings with men, learning about both male entitlement and masculine nurturing. In other words, we stay within Joan’s womanly point of view throughout and even halfway understand the basis of her unlawful actions when she finally admits them to both her son and the stone-faced interrogators.  

Turns out, Joan didn’t just pass on her country’s nuclear secrets in the innocent name of devotion—in reality, she took up an ideological agenda entirely of her own after seeing the catastrophic atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She had thought it was only with access to equal information could the superpowers be on balance with each other, and stopped from such disastrous actions in the future. While this reasoning doesn’t seem to hold much historical accuracy, it makes sense within the context of a sound film that commendably insists on differentiating a woman’s inexperience from naïveté—“Red Joan” doesn’t burden its female protagonist with the latter.  

Capably lensed by cinematographer Zac Nicholson with a focus on the period’s earthy colors and textures and costumed to perfection by Charlotte Walter (who also dressed “Their Finest” with the same level of attention to the era’s knitwear and suiting), “Red Joan” leaves a lasting impression mostly with its flashback scenes. While Judi Dench is flawless in bringing time-spanning depth to her melancholic character (with accidental nods to her infamous “ M ” persona), her contemporary segments are comparably bland by narrative design. Uneven it may be, “Red Joan” still emanates a memorable essence, one that’s refreshingly and believably feminine.  

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

Now playing

Brian Tallerico

Kaiya Shunyata

Sheila O'Malley

The Bikeriders

Robert daniels.

Reverse the Curse

The Young Wife

Film credits.

Red Joan (2019)

Rated R for brief sexuality/nudity.

110 minutes

Judi Dench as Joan Stanley

Sophie Cookson as Young Joan Stanley

Tom Hughes as Leo

Tereza Srbová as Sonya

Laurence Spellman as Patrick Adams

• Trevor Nunn
• Lindsay Shapero

Cinematographer

• Zac Nicholson
• Kristina Hetherington
• George Fenton

Latest blog posts

Kevin Costner: The Last of the Cornball American Directors

Leaving A Mark Behind: Kevin Costner on Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

The Hard Way, Or My Way? RIP Bill Cobbs (1934-2024)

Catherine Breillat Wants You to Think About (Movie) Sex Differently

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Red Joan’ Review: I Spy, Reluctantly

• Share full article

By Jeannette Catsoulis

• April 18, 2019

A story of Cambridge spies, atom-bomb secrets and a passionate affair between a demure Brit and a dashing Commie should steam up the screen and pop your popcorn. Or you would think so: but leave it to the feted British theater director Trevor Nunn to flatten the intrigue and dampen the lust that could have made “Red Joan” zing.

Nunn, however, can’t take all the blame for the terribly-proper tone and stodgy pacing. Lindsay Shapero’s screenplay ( adapted from Jennie Rooney’s 2013 novel and based on the real-life spy Melita Norwood) is an equal culprit, heavy on flashbacks and light on the seductiveness of hazardous ideas. Structured around the questioning of Joan Stanley (Judi Dench, reliably flawless), an English octogenarian charged with treason for leaking classified information to the Soviets, the movie strains to shed the claustrophobia of the interrogation room.

Slipping back to 1938, the story finds Joan (now played by Sophie Cookson) studying physics at Cambridge and falling under the spell of the glamorous Sonya (Tereza Srbova). She’ll keep falling when she meets the dangerously handsome Leo (Tom Hughes), a German Jew and Communist whose body interests her much more than his radical politics. Not until later, when she’s part of a secret project to build the bomb, do its fearsome capabilities persuade her of the upside of mutually assured destruction.

As a portrait of misplaced love and pacifist ideals, “Red Joan” isn’t terrible. Zac Nicholson’s images are soft as dust, but it’s the haze of fusty rooms and the free-floating sexism of the time. What should be breathless and urgent is instead polite and listless: if you can’t ignite sparks from an illicit bathroom assignation, then maybe espionage just isn’t your thing.

Rated R for extremely tasteful sex. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes.

UK Edition Change

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Fitness & Wellbeing
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Car Insurance Deals
• Lifestyle Videos
• UK Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Home & Garden
• Broadband deals
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Solar Panels
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Betting Sites
• Online Casinos
• Wine Offers

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

Red Joan review: Judi Dench gives a typically subtle and deft performance as the OAP Soviet spy

Is she a hero or traitor the filmmakers can’t quite decide, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey

Get our the life cinematic email for free, thanks for signing up to the the life cinematic email.

Dir: Trevor Nunn; Starring: Judi Dench , Sophie Cookson , Tereza Srbova, Tom Hughes. Cert 12A, 101 mins

Imagine that the little old lady pruning her roses in the next door garden is a KGB informer. That is the premise from which Red Joan starts. Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) is an OAP living in quiet retirement in English suburbia. She has pictures of her grandchildren on the mantlepiece but no portraits of Lenin or Hammer and Sickle ornaments.

There is an obvious curiosity value in seeing Judi Dench, M in the James Bond movies, back on screen as a spy but Joan is nowhere near as formidable as the MI6 boss who used to give the orders to 007 . She is a frail and nervous woman who can’t bear to be in the glare of the media.

One reason Red Joan is so frustrating to watch is that the filmmakers can’t make up their minds about Joan. Is she a heroine who broke the Official Secrets Act because of her desire for global peace? Is she a traitor? Is she a naive fool, too easily swayed by her own sentimentality? An equivocal and tentative film portrays her as a mixture of all of these traits.

Director Trevor Nunn has worked before with Dench, perhaps most notably on the celebrated Royal Shakespeare production of Macbeth . There is little of the ferocity of that production here. Instead, the film trundles back and forth in time from 2000, when Joan is arrested and is being interrogated, to the late 1930s, when she was a fresh-faced undergraduate at Cambridge University.

Joan (played as a young woman by Sophie Cookson), arms herself with a hockey stick when an intruder appears at the window of her ground floor student rooms one evening. This is Sonya (Tereza Srbova), a sophisticated and decadent English Literature student from a mysterious eastern European background. Sonya introduces Joan to her communist friends, among them the charismatic Leo (Tom Hughes), to whom she is immediately attracted. He likes her too – but just not as much as he likes Stalin.

The 1930s was the period of Stalin’s show trials, mass starvation in Ukraine and extreme terror but none of the Oxbridge communists in Joan’s new circle of friends are willing to acknowledge any of this.

Joan is an infuriating figure whose behaviour is as hard to fathom at the end of the film as it is at the beginning. As an old woman, she tells her police interrogators that she has nothing to hide. As a young scientist, she sleepwalks into spying for the Soviet Union and doesn’t appear to have any crisis of conscience about her own behaviour whatsoever. She is as reticent and discreet in her private life as in her professional career. She has affairs and sometimes seems to be in love but is far too guarded to give in to anything approaching real passion. The result is a film which, although very handsomely made, has little dramatic intensity.

The filmmakers capture the extreme chauvinism of the era. Politicians and men in authority don’t take Joan seriously as a scientist. They think she is there to make the tea or that she will be more interested in new technology for tumble dryers than in building atom bombs. Their blinkered sexism allows her to steal secrets under their eyes without anyone noticing. Her own son, a successful lawyer, has no idea about her past. He thinks that she spent her career as a librarian. “It’s like I don’t know you,” he says in dismay as details of her spying spill out, expressing a bewilderment at her character that audiences may well share.

Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days

New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled

The 40 best film soundtracks

Dench gives a typically subtle and deft performance as the OAP spy. She is far less imperious than when playing Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth I or M. Her role here is closer to the one in Philomena , as the diffident woman addressing dark events in her youth. Nervous and self-effacing, she deals with the contradictions in her past simply by ignoring them. Dench hints, though, that she is more worldly and wise than she is letting on.

Sophie Cookson plays the younger Joan as a shy but resilient figure with a surprising streak of ruthlessness. She may seem demure but she is ready to use blackmail and subterfuge to protect herself.

Like its heroine, Red Joan is a film without any clear identity. It isn’t an espionage thriller. Nor is it a love story. Nor is it a drama about a woman’s political awakening. Certain elements here feel very glib indeed. The idea that Joan (based on the real-life KGB mole Melita Norwood) somehow ensured peace in our time by feeding information about atom bomb research to the Soviet Union is absurd. “I am not a spy… I am not a traitor,” she protests to the media who assemble outside her front door. Her justifications for her behaviour ring very hollow and it is not at all clear that she believes in them herself.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Want an ad-free experience?

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre

British Period Dramas

British period drama movies & TV series

Is new Judi Dench movie ‘Red Joan’ worth watching? Here’s what the reviews say

Dame Judi Dench’s new movie Red Joan is out now in UK cinemas.

Inspired by the life of the KGB’s longest-serving British spy, Melita Norwood , the movie stars Sophie Cookson ( Kingsman ) as the younger version of Dench’s character, Joan Stanley, who is based on the real life Norwood.

The cast also includes  Victoria  star Tom Hughes  as the young communist that Joan falls for as a Cambridge physics student in the late 1930s.

Watch the trailer:

The official synopsis for Red Joan reads: “The year is 2000 and Joan Stanley is living in contented retirement in suburbia at the turn of the millennium. Her tranquil life is suddenly disrupted when she’s arrested by MI5 and accused of providing intelligence to Communist Russia.

“Cut to 1938 where Joan is a Cambridge physics student who falls for young communist Leo Galich and through him, begins to see the world in a new light.

“Working at a top-secret nuclear research facility during WWII, Joan comes to the realisation that the world is on the brink of mutually assured destruction. Confronted with an impossible question – what price would you pay for peace? – Joan must choose between betraying her country and loved ones or saving them.”

We’ve rounded up a selection of reviews to help you decide if you’d like to watch it:

“Despite strong performances from Cookson and Dench, this potentially exciting espionage tale is dreary and forgettable.” ★★ – Empire

“Yet as good as [Dench] is, the actress is little more than the framing device for this polished and morally provocative — yet hardly pulse-pounding — tale…” – The Washington Post

“What should be breathless and urgent is instead polite and listless: if you can’t ignite sparks from an illicit bathroom assignation, then maybe espionage just isn’t your thing.” – The New York Times

“Judi Dench underused in brittle defector drama … Trevor Nunn’s film about ‘granny spy’ Melita Norwood aims for The Imitation Game -style spring, but squanders its greatest acting asset.” ★★ – The Guardian

“Though not unpromising as a story, the film drains any interest with staid compositions, shallowly drawn characters and spell-everything-out dialogue.” ★★ – The Scotsman

“How do you bring the legendary stage director Trevor Nunn together with the peerless screen icon Judi Dench, hand them a real-life wartime spy story that’s full of sex and intrigue, and a race to build a nuclear bomb, yet still, somehow, end up with this? This splodgy, second-rate, am-dram blancmange?” ★ – The Times

“Like its heroine, Red Joan is a film without any clear identity. It isn’t an espionage thriller. Nor is it a love story. Nor is it a drama about a woman’s political awakening.” ★★★ – The Independent

“A romantic take on a fascinating true story, Red Joan features an underused – but affecting – Judi Dench.” ★★ – The Mirror

Red Joan will be released in Canada on 3rd May and in the USA later this year.

A book about the story, The Spy Who Came In From the Co-op , is available to buy on  Amazon .

• ← ‘The Tudors’ star has secret role in the ‘Downton Abbey’ movie
• ‘Victoria’ Season 3 Episode 6 recap: What happened in ‘A Coburg Quartet’? →

Review: ‘Red Joan’ presents Judi Dench in a morally complex role

• Copy Link URL Copied!

“Red Joan” is a traditional production, polished as brass and as old-school diverting as a film starring Judi Dench and directed by Trevor Nunn would have to be.

But there is also a kind of hollowness at its center, a tone that is more conventional than compelling. “Red Joan’s” time frame and its loosely based-on-fact story line have intrinsic interest, but not all of that potential is realized.

Though Dench is “Red Joan’s” marquee attraction, she appears as Joan Stanley only in the film’s contemporary framing device, introduced in 2000 as a quintessentially British elderly party carefully tending to a garden of brightly blooming flowers.

No sooner are the gardening shears put away, however, than there comes a stern knock on the door and members of the national security-focused Special Branch come bursting in, arresting Joan for 27 breaches of the Official Secrets Act and accusing her of traitorous activities dating back to 1938 and her days as a student at Cambridge.

Joan’s solicitor son Nick (Ben Miles, Group Capt. Peter Townsend in “The Crown”) angrily insists there must be some mistake, his kindly old mum could not have played fast and loose with national security.

But as the title indicates, there is soon very little doubt that pass secrets Joan did. The question becomes not whether the accusations are true but how and why the deed was done.

Though older Joan periodically reappears to explain herself (“The world was so different then, you have no idea”), much of the story unfolds in flashbacks set between 1938 and 1947, and here Joan is very capably played by Sophie Cookson .

“Red Joan’s” script, adapted by Lindsay Shapero from a novel by Jennie Rooney, is based on the exploits of Melita Norwood , a real-life British atomic spy unmasked at a great age, but a glance at the facts shows that the resemblance is far from exact and that the needs of contemporary audiences influenced the film as much as history.

Director Nunn came across Rooney’s novel in a book shop. Though largely known as a prolific producer and director of theater, including “Les Misérables,” something in this story of innocence and subterfuge intrigued Nunn enough to take it on.

After Joan is arrested, she submits to a lengthy government interrogation, and her answers are the cues for the film’s extensive flashbacks, starting with her introduction in 1938 as an earnest physics major and all around science nerd.

Quite by chance (isn’t it always that way), Joan runs into the scintillating Sonya (Tereza Srbova), an energetic and outgoing refugee from both Russia and Germany, the first Jew she’s ever met and a woman whose radical politics and cavalier disregard for love come as a shock.

Joan tags along with Sonya to film night at the local Communist Party HQ, where she gets the chance to both watch Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” and exchange significant glances with Sonya’s cousin Leo (Tom Hughes).

Leo turns out to be even more of a radical activist than Sonya, completely believing that communism will remake the world in a more just way. Soon enough, he and Sonya, whom he calls “my little comrade,” are inseparable.

Things are busy for Joan professionally as well, as she is hired to work with handsome professor Max Davis (Stephen Campbell Moore) on the innocuously labeled but very hush-hush “tube alloys project.”

That turns out to be the U.K.’s version of America’s Manhattan Project, as Britain is loath to be left behind in the worldwide race to weaponize the splitting of the atom.

Though Leo disappears from Joan’s life for big chunks of time, he reappears periodically to pump her for information about her new job, which he has somehow figured out is about nuclear weaponry.

“The Russians deserve to know,” Leo insists, adding that possession of the bomb is essential to the survival of the revolution he believes is the world’s best hope for justice.

In constructing this scenario, clearly aware that Joan’s spying was considered treasonous once it was exposed, the filmmakers have made sure to counterbalance that by treating her with the utmost respect.

For one thing, “Red Joan” insists it was Joan’s familiarity with physics, not just her office skills and attractiveness, that got her hired for the project.

And the film emphasizes that her eventual decision to share information with the Soviets had nothing to do with the romantic pressure Leo put on her but was rather motivated by her own idealistic belief that nuclear parity would serve the cause of world peace.

But it’s not only its generic elements and sporadic listlessness that hampers “Red Joan,” it’s that the film’s attempts to convince us of the rightness of her actions don’t succeed either.

To believe that giving the bomb to Russia was the right thing to do is to both ignore the nature of Stalin’s regime (which the film largely does) and to believe that the more countries that have the bomb, the safer we all are. It’s a hard argument to make, and “Red Joan” is not up to making it convincingly.

-------------

Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Playing: Starts April 19, the Landmark, West Los Angeles

[email protected]

@KennethTuran

More to Read

Review: Abstract expressionism, espionage and Cold War history converge in John Ross Bowie’s ‘Brushstroke’

Feb. 3, 2024

Commentary: For all of its joy, ‘The Color Purple’ is also a chance to talk about Black women and intimate partner violence

Dec. 26, 2023

Review: The ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas special delivers a pure, exhilarating adventure

Dec. 22, 2023

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Kenneth Turan is the former film critic for the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Martin Mull dies at 80: The comic actor, ‘Roseanne’ star and painter’s life in headlines

June 28, 2024

Review: ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ is the rare prequel that outclasses the original for mood

Hollywood Inc.

Judge denies Alec Baldwin’s motion to dismiss ‘Rust’ case, allowing trial to proceed

Review: In ‘Last Summer,’ an illicit relationship takes root in all its messy provocation

• Environment
• Road to Net Zero
• Art & Design
• Film & TV
• Music & On-stage
• Pop Culture
• Fashion & Beauty
• Home & Garden
• Things to do
• Combat Sports
• Horse Racing
• Beyond the Headlines
• Trending Middle East
• Business Extra
• Culture Bites
• Year of Elections
• Pocketful of Dirhams
• Books of My Life
• Iraq: 20 Years On

Review: 'Red Joan' is an understated spy drama in which the women hold all the cards

Judi dench and sophie cookson double up as an octogenarian super spy in trevor nunn's film.

Judi Dench plays Joan Stanley in Trevor Nunn's drama.

Director: Trevor Nunn

Starring: Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Tereza Srbova

Rating: 3/5 stars

There's some hefty thespian credibility attached to Red Joan , with stage giant and former British Royal National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Trevor Nunn in the director's chair, and multi-award winner Judi Dench heading up the cast, and by and large it delivers.

The film, which is loosely based on the true story of Londoner Melita Norwood, who was belatedly identified as a spy in 1999, begins as any other day in a quaint Little-English suburb around the turn of the 21st century. Amiable, octogenarian pensioner Joan Stanley (Dench) is pruning the bushes in her front garden before popping in for a nice cup of teas and a read of the paper.

She seems unduly intrigued by the reported death of a former Foreign Office minister, and when Special Branch come knocking at the door we slowly learn why. Documents recovered following the former minister’s death have implicated him in a Soviet spy ring dating back to the 1930s, and all the evidence suggests that cuddly old Joan may have spent much of the thirties and forties giving away Britain’s nuclear secrets to the red menace in the East.

Stylistically, there’s nothing ground-breaking here. Joan is interviewed at the police station, flanked by her disbelieving son and lawyer played by Ben Miles, who will undergo his own intriguing character arc as he slowly learns his entire life has been built on a foundation of lies.

We then cut to a series of flashbacks as young Joan (Cookson) heads to Cambridge University, befriends dedicated communist Sonia, falls for Sonia’s cousin and Stalinist firebrand Leo (Tom Hughes) and finds herself attending Communist Party meetings and anti-Hitler rallies, more as something to do and a means of attracting Leo’s eye than through any great ideological commitment.

When Joan, now a first-class physics graduate, is taken on as an assistant at a top-secret nuclear research centre, she suddenly becomes of dramatically increased importance to her new communist friends.

This is where the film gets interesting, though not entirely in the way we might expect. There are elements of espionage and intrigue, but Joan's treasonous actions are almost incidental to the real story. Rather than settling into the spirit of a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or asking Dench to reprise her 'M' role from Bond , Red Joan has thematically more in common with films like The Imitation Game or Their Finest .

Like those films, Red Joan is less interested in what Joan is doing, than how she is perceived while doing it, and what it is assumed she's capable of, as a woman in a certain period of history.

Like in those films Joan, despite being one of the finest minds of her generation, is relegated to the role of assistant because of her gender, and is generally treated by those that don’t know her as someone to make tea, although she may, unbeknownst to them, have just solved one of the burning scientific questions of the day.

Conversely in Joan’s case, however, the misogyny of the world she inhabits can also work in her favour. When a scientist at a Canadian co-research centre is unmasked as a Soviet spy, and evidence leads back to another mole at Joan’s UK facility, her lowly secretary is beyond suspicion and she’s able to smuggle all the evidence out before her cover is blown.

We get to see Joan’s growth as a woman, both through her burgeoning career as a scientist and a spy, and her romantic liaisons through the film, first with Leo, and later her boss Max (Stephen Campbell Moore), and ultimately we learn the true motivation for Joan’s actions – not revolutionary fervour or a desire to betray her country, but horror at the atrocities in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the firm conviction that only if both sides in the Cold War possess this terrible weapon can we be sure it will never be used again.

Red Joan is thoughtful and entertaining fare. It's not a high point among Dench's many performances, but that's largely by design. Her bumbling, elderly Joan is intentionally more understated and bland than Cookson's younger version, and that only serves to make the notion of picking her up for her "crimes" seven, nuclear annihilation-free decades later all the more farcical.

Toronto Film Review: ‘Red Joan’

A London octogenarian’s hidden past as a spy for the USSR is exposed in this curiously flat drama.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

Film Critic

• ’A Sacrifice’ Review: Suicide Is Painless In a Fuzzy Thriller Starring Sadie Sink and Eric Bana 4 days ago
• ‘Trigger Warning’ Review: Supersoldier Jessica Alba Wages War on Domestic Criminals in Slick but Contrived Melodrama 1 week ago
• ‘A Desert’ Review: Joshua Erkman’s Debut Feature Is an Intriguing but Murky, Horror-Adjacent Mystery 3 weeks ago

Trevor Nunn is not the first director to accrue both a glorious stage résumé and a paltry, pedestrian screen one. Still, given the talent involved, it’s disappointing that “Red Joan” does so little to change that — his first theatrical feature since a decent “Twelfth Night” adaptation 22 years ago is a would-be sweeping epic that instead turns out tweedy, dreary, and unconvincing.

Something was surely lost along the way as the real-life story of one Melita Norwood — a British civil servant of scant note until her pro-USSR espionage was revealed when she was an elderly retiree — turned into a 2014 novel by Jessica Rooney, then into this tepid film incarnation. Beyond all other intrigue, our heroine here proves an under-radar key player in shaping the power dynamics of the Cold War. So it’s dismaying that so little drama is wrung out of the tale, and that what we get too often feels like a cliché-riddled romantic pulp.

Related Stories

Car buyers want more screens as in-vehicle entertainment rises, julianna margulies will not return to 'the morning show' for season 4 (exclusive).

You can’t fault Judi Dench or Sophie Cookson’s performances as the protagonist in late and early adulthood, respectively. But what had potential to strike a middle ground between “Hidden Figures” and “Another Country” instead feels like an unwise resuscitation of a 1940s script that might’ve had Madeleine Carroll tempted into betraying king and country by the insidious wiles of James Mason. Actually, that movie would have been fun — this one doesn’t embrace the creaky melodrama it nonetheless succumbs to, resulting in something that feels old at birth, and not in a charmingly retro way.

Popular on Variety

In 2000 suburban London, octogenarian widow Joan Stanley (Dench) is surprised by a knock at the door — even more so when it turns out that she’s under arrest for treason. It seems the death of an erstwhile colleague has somehow exposed her suspicious activities of decades before. Interrogated by government representatives, she denies all guilt but relates her story in flashbacks.

Reading physics at Cambridge just before World War 2, young Joan (Cookson) was a studious, mousy thing dazzled by the glamour of immigrant classmate Sonya (Tereza Srbova), then swept off her feet by the latter’s dreamy cousin Leo (Tom Hughes). Both are Jewish refugees from Germany with roots in Russia, involved in anti-fascist activism and the Communist Party.

Though she’s not entirely sure about that Stalin fellow, Joan proves fairly easy to recruit, both to the Party and Leo’s bed. When war breaks out and she’s drafted to assist Professor Max Davies (Stephen Campbell Moore) on a top-secret British equivalent to the Manhattan Project, it doesn’t take long for her “comrades” to beg she leak some classified intel for the benefit of Mother Russia.

Eventually it becomes clear we’re meant to believe Joan’s actions rose out of private conviction — she thought Soviets also having “the bomb” would prevent the major post-war powers from annihilating each other. But that conscience isn’t made vivid enough in a film that till then had suggested our heroine was simply a fool for love, bowled over by Leo’s heavy-lidded seduction tactics. (James Mason could indeed have pulled off a bag of tricks that look vain and silly on too-pretty Tom Hughes.) It would require a whole lot of chemistry for this high-risk passion to persuade us. Alas, there’s nary a spark between these performers, nor between Cookson and Moore once that professional relationship gets personal.

Never mind that Lindsay Shapero’s screenplay keeps dropping unsubtle hints about how brilliant and unappreciated Joan is in a scientific boys’ club, denied credit even when she solves their problems for them. Somehow none of this seems convincing — without presumably meaning to, the movie renders its central character the kind of hapless pawn at which people used to dismissively cluck the words, “Silly woman!” Dench, whose scenes are nearly all in one room, can’t make much more of Senior Joan than a bewildered old lady whose beliefs remain as frustratingly vague as they did half a century earlier.

“Red Joan” is uninspired on all levels, with credible-enough period atmosphere but little in the way of style or scale to give this oddly flat tale — odd because it involves sex, spying, scandal, and death, none of which bring excitement here — an aesthetic lift. The most you can say about the film’s look and George Fenton’s original score are that they are conventionally workmanlike.

The source novel appears to have taken considerable fictive liberties with Melita Norwood’s actual history. One suspects the latter might still make a good film one day, and that this one won’t be remembered long enough to provide an obstacle.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 7, 2018. Running time: 109 MIN.

• Production: (U.K.) A Quickfire presentation, in association with Embankment Films, Twickenham Studios, of a Trademark Films production, in association with Cambridge Pictures Co. (Int'l sales: Embankment, London.) Producer: David Parfitt. Co-producers: Alice Dawson, Ivan Mactaggart. Executive producers: Karl Sydow, Tim Haslam, Hugo Grumbar, Zygi Kamasa, James Atherton, Jan Pace, Kelly E. Ashton.
• Crew: Director: Trevor Nunn. Screenplay: Lindsay Shapero, based on the novel by Jennie Rooney. Camera (color, HD): Zac Nicholson. Editor: Kristina Hetherington. Music: George Fenton.
• With: Judi Dench, Stephen Campbell Moore, Sophie Cookson, Tom Hughes, Ben Miles, Nina Susanna, Tereza Srbova.

More from Variety

Jerry seinfeld shuts down more pro-palestine hecklers during set in australia: you ‘just gave more money to a jew’, ame institute to host “state of the creative industries” panel, sponsored by variety vip+, jerry seinfeld roasts pro-palestine heckler who interrupted his set and got ejected: ‘it’s a comedy show, you moron get out of here’, playstation state of play underscores muted release year ahead of summer game fest, more from our brands, imagine dragons take a lighter approach to heavy life stuff on ‘loom’, yolanda hadid’s former malibu mansion just hit the market for $35 million, macklin celebrini chosen first by san jose sharks in 2024 nhl draft, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, the chi season 6 finale marks three big cast exits (and two major deaths) — hear from one of the recently departed, verify it's you, please log in.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• A Quiet Place: Day One Link to A Quiet Place: Day One
• Inside Out 2 Link to Inside Out 2
• Daddio Link to Daddio

New TV Tonight

• The Bear: Season 3
• My Lady Jane: Season 1
• Land of Women: Season 1
• Orphan Black: Echoes: Season 1
• Supacell: Season 1
• That '90s Show: Season 2
• Savage Beauty: Season 2
• WondLa: Season 1
• Zombies: The Re-Animated Series: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
• The Boys: Season 4
• Presumed Innocent: Season 1
• Dark Matter: Season 1
• House of the Dragon: Season 2
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• My Lady Jane: Season 1 Link to My Lady Jane: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Kevin Costner’s Best Movies and Shows Ranked by Tomatometer

Best Movies of 2024: Best New Movies to Watch Now

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

The Bear : Season 3 First Reviews: Still One of the Best Shows on TV

A Quiet Place: Day One First Reviews: A Tense, Surprisingly Tender Thriller Anchored by Fantastic Performances

• Trending on RT
• Best Movies
• July's Anticipated Movies
• A Quiet Place: Day One

Red Joan Reviews

For all the faults of editing and storytelling, Cookson still gives a striking performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 7, 2020

Though the film tells an intriguing story, director Trevor Nunn's approach is bland while the movie's pace flirts with tedium throughout.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Nov 20, 2020

The result is a movie that might not ever be all that thrilling, but it is never anything other than watchable.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2020

Young Joan, old Joan, Red Joan, blue Joan -- it's all the same here.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 27, 2020

Red Joan takes an intriguing premise and dilutes it almost beyond recognition into a boring and poorly done romance. Unlike good spy movies, Nunn's dreary history lesson leaves you neither shaken nor stirred.

Full Review | Original Score: 2 / 5 | Jul 27, 2020

Red Joan is certainly a watchable curiosity, but as a piece of political discourse, it seems strangely ham-fisted and bland.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 21, 2020

A dull telling of a lively true spy yarn.

Full Review | Original Score: C | May 26, 2020

Every plot point and every character insight gets delivered with the same manufactured smoothness; the movie is naggingly bland in the way one associates with "respectable" British cinema.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2020

Red Joan feels like it was a middling British TV drama pilot that ran too long and they sold it as a movie instead.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 10, 2020

The lead actresses are both solid but the direction by Trevor Nunn is dull.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Dec 19, 2019

A spy movie lacking suspense. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 16, 2019

Lindsay Shapero's screenplay bases the spy figure on stereotypes and reduces her difficulties to her romantic relationships, gradually forgetting her complex personality. [Full Review in Spanish]

Its conventional if uneven structure keeps the tension mild despite subject matter rife with ethical questions and contemporary resonance.

Full Review | Sep 7, 2019

Perhaps Nunn tried to do a bit too much with this film, layering this woman's secret past with themes of feminist and anti-war sentiment. When the film focuses on the characters in the past, it builds a driving thriller tension...

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 29, 2019

What one perceives in this movie is a particular passivity and several errors in the development of suspense, melodrama, and almost any appeal related to the spy film, or even the biographical film. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 25, 2019

The music... is enough to keep the viewer's curiosity. [Full review in Spaniash]

Unintended silliness makes young Joan look foolish for being entranced by them, robbing her of agency when the film is desperate to prove the opposite.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 3, 2019

Red Joan itself is reportedly based on the story of Melita Norwood, who passed the Soviets' information on the West's nuclear development. Sadly, Norwood's Wikipedia page is more of a thrilling yarn than most of Red Joan.

Full Review | Jun 28, 2019

Joan Stanley's story of means and ends opens in 2000 rural Britain, where an elderly Joan is arrested and charged by MI5 with treason, an accusation she vehemently denies.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 21, 2019

It's an intriguing true story but Red Joan isn't the slick, gripping thriller you might expect.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jun 17, 2019

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Metacritic reviews

• 80 Film Threat Tiffany Tchobanian Film Threat Tiffany Tchobanian Lindsey Shapiro has captured an intriguing piece of hidden history, showcasing women’s strengths and the overlooked roles they played during the world’s most turbulent times of war.
• 70 The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young A good old-fashioned British spy thriller.
• 60 CineVue Lucy Popescu CineVue Lucy Popescu Red Joan is unlikely to appeal to younger audiences and many may find the wartime plot, setting and slow-paced romance old-fashioned, but it will win fans because there is much to admire: The solid acting, Lindsay Shapero’s deft screen adaptation, Zac Nicholson’s evocative cinematography, accompanied by George Fenton’s original score.
• 50 The Playlist Jessica Kiang The Playlist Jessica Kiang It’s always dangerous to wonder about what a film might have been rather than contending with what it is, but in this case what it is, is so bland, and so stolidly workmanlike in execution that even the most dedicated viewer might find her attention sliding off DP Zac Nicholson‘s ration-book-colored images and wandering to the what-ifs.
• 50 Screen Daily Wendy Ide Screen Daily Wendy Ide Solidly competent and, for the most part, well acted the, film employs a safe, familiar approach and lacks the distinctive element which could boost its box office potential.
• 40 The Guardian The Guardian The film itself fails to overwhelm – mostly proceeding along dully familiar lines and anything but radical.
• 40 Empire Empire Despite strong performances from Cookson and Dench, this potentially exciting espionage tale is dreary and forgettable.
• 40 The Guardian Peter Bradshaw The Guardian Peter Bradshaw Quite simply, there is not enough Dench, not enough Old Joan, not enough about how she feels about the decades of deceit, and tension, and becalmed ordinariness, far from the drama of espionage.
• 40 The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis Leave it to the feted British theater director Trevor Nunn to flatten the intrigue and dampen the lust that could have made Red Joan zing.
• 20 Variety Dennis Harvey Variety Dennis Harvey Tweedy, dreary, and unconvincing. ... It’s dismaying that so little drama is wrung out of the tale, and that what we get too often feels like a cliché-riddled romantic pulp.
• See all 22 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Red Joan

More from this title

More to explore, recently viewed.

Red Joan Review

19 Apr 2019

On paper, Red Joan seems to tick all the necessary boxes for an exciting spy movie: there’s betrayal, sex scandals and shocking deaths. And yet, as directed by Trevor Nunn, this tale of a British civil servant selling secrets to the Russians is bland and conventional when it should be suspenseful and provocative.

Adapted from Jennie Rooney’s novel that’s based on the real life story of Melita Norwood, Red Joan opens with the arrest of retired librarian Joan Stanley ( Dench ) after the death of a colleague reveals her suspicious ties to the KGB. As she recounts her story to the authorities we flit between a present-day interrogation room and 1930s Cambridge as a younger, initially timid Joan ( Sophie Cookson ) is all too easily recruited by her Communist classmate Sonya (Tereza Srbova) and her cousin Leo (Tom Hughes), whom she falls for. Later, when Joan joins a top-secret British programme to build nuclear weaponry, her comrades persuade her to leak classified intel to Russia.

That we have to wait until Red Joan ’s final moments to get a sense of its protagonist’s calculating and ultimately prescient motivations for betraying her country — she believed if Russia also had a nuke it would stop the superpowers from bombing each other — speaks to the flaws in Lindsay Shapero’s screenplay. Instead of exploring that underdeveloped thread we get a romance that’s more tepid than passionate, and indeed, it’s easier to believe that Joan did it out of love given that she falls for Leo’s unconvincing seductive tactics time and time again.

While the narrative leaves much to be desired, the two central performances are at least beyond reproach. The back and forth transitions do well to create a full picture of Joan, and while Dench is not given a lot to work with she gives her a likeable earnestness that shines through. The bulk of the screen time falls to Cookson and she acquits herself well, both convincing as a younger Dench and a shy student who slowly comes into her own.

Related Articles

Movies | 14 08 2019

Movies | 16 01 2019

• Join Club LWLies
• Get the Mag
• Open search
• Membership: Support our independent journalism
• Podcast: Listen and Subscribe
• YouTube: Watch our latest video essays

Review by Caitlin Quinlan @csaquinlan

Directed by

Trevor Nunn

Judi Dench Sophie Cookson Stephen Boxer

Anticipation.

Another formulaic Brit biopic on the cards?

A bold story delivered safely and without passion.

In Retrospect.

This piece of history shouldn’t be so forgettable.

Judi Dench impresses in a limited role as the KGB’s longest-serving British spy.

A female KGB operative at the heart of the USSR’s nuclear weapons development programme, and yet still “not not a pretty face” as Trevor Nunn’s Red Joan makes clear, Melita Norwood lived a remarkable life. Fictionalised as Joan Stanley or ‘Red Joan’ originally by novelist Jennie Rooney, her story has been smothered by cups and saucers, received pronunciation, and no daring espionage thrills whatsoever, in a routine, staid film adaptation.

Sophie Cookson plays the young, decadently-costumed Joan, a physics student at Cambridge at the outbreak of the Second World War. Falling into the university’s young Communist crowd, and falling in love with leading member Leo Galich (Tom Hughes), Joan flits between sympathy and suspicion of the Stalinist regime. A graduate job as an assistant to a classified research team gives her access to a wealth of secrets, just as nuclear arms progress across the world races forwards.

Decades later, Joan (now played by Judi Dench) is arrested in her front porch and taken in for questioning over her student days. Through a series of flashbacks, the film details her burgeoning political activity and subsequent leaking of information to Soviet sources, including Britain’s plans for the atom bomb.

An exciting premise in many ways, but everything about the film feels limp. Romantic storylines are at the heart of the action despite the undeniably serious and bold work Joan involves herself in, and even these are frustratingly passionless. The film does make an effort at least to ensure ensure clarity over Joan’s reasoning for supplying the Russians with such British intelligence. Her anger and shame over the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and her desire for a level world playing field with nuclear weapons are her motivators, not Leo’s seductive power or her naivety. Still, this is the only glimpse into Joan’s actual personality on offer.

Choppy structuring makes it difficult to engage with Joan as a young woman as we skim through the narrative of her bold youth, being told what is about to happen before we are shown. Dench delivers some fine speeches in defence of her character’s younger days, but her role is exceedingly limited. Is there really any need for the film to pull us out of 1940s Cambridge so often and so repetitively, back to the same bland interrogation room or cosy interiors of grandma Joan’s house?

The dual timeline fails the striking source material and the lazy romance leaves no room for a deep delve into Joan’s character without the men who orbit her life. What might a young female director have done with such a story, god forbid we should ask.

Published 23 Apr 2019

Tags: Judi Dench Sophie Cookson Trevor Nunn

Most Popular

LWLies 102: the Challengers issue – Out now!

Kinds of Kindness – first-look review

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga review – Miller you absolute mad man

Alice Rohrwacher: ‘The past must be a living thing’

Suggested For You

Victoria & Abdul

By Katherine McLaughlin

Judi Dench reprises her role as Queen Victoria in this touching study of later-life depression.

The White Crow

By Matt Thrift

Ralph Fiennes directs this staid biography of ballet maestro and political dissident, Rudolf Nureyev.

Tulip Fever

By David Jenkins

Alicia Vikander and Christoph Waltz suffer through this turgid period drama.

• Become a Member
• Digital Editions
• Write for LWLies
• Access Information
• Privacy Policy
• The Scoring System

What are you looking for?

About Little White Lies

Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.

• David Jenkins
• Hannah Strong
• Marina Ashioti
• Laurène Boglio

“Red Joan,” Promising a Soviet Spy Thriller, Underdelivers

At the height of the Cold War, five members of Britain’s nuclear program passed secrets along to the USSR.

by Ed Rampell

April 19, 2019

In “Red Joan,” Sophie Cookson plays a young Joan Stanley, based on the British double agent Melita Norwood.

Many historically literate citizens of what Gore Vidal pithily dubbed “the United States of Amnesia” know about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their purported 1950s atomic spy ring that clandestinely transmitted nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.

The Rosenbergs were the only civilians electrocuted during the Red Scare. But there were other similar allegations, including that participants of the New Mexico-based “Manhattan Project” to build atomic weapons—headed by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer—leaked N-secrets to the Ruskies as the Cold War got underway in the 1950s.

While it’s exciting to watch historical depictions of the left fighting Franco, director Nunn’s back-and-forth in time quickly wears out its welcome.

What I didn’t know is that an alleged parallel plot also played out in Britain’s atomic program. That’s the story U.K.-born director Trevor Nunn and screenwriter Lindsay Shapero depict in the 1 hour, 41 minute feature film Red Joan .

The unlikely ringleader of this alleged plot was, in sexist 1940s/1950s England, a woman who according to press notes was actually named Melita Norwood, although this real life character is called “Joan Stanley” onscreen. Since 1932, Norwood served as a secretary with a research group called t he British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association, which gave the left-leaning Norwood access to N-secrets innocently called “Tube Alloys.”

Red Joan has a flashback structure, stretching back to her activist activities opposing the Spanish Civil War at the Cambridge campus (although Norwood is believed to have actually graduated from the University of Southampton). Previously, I’d read Kim Philby’s autobiography about being a Kremlin double agent and part of the well-known “Cambridge Five,” who supposedly passed covert information on to the Soviets.

Red Joan partially takes place in the 1930s and during the WWII and Cold War decades. Sophie Cookson, who appears in Kingsman and Huntsman flicks, plays the film’s protagonist in early adulthood, as she romances commies including the dashing Leo, played by Tom Hughes, and the married (complications ensue!) lefty scientist Nick, played by Ben Miles.

When in 1999 the proverbial long arm of the law presumably catches up with Joan, who may have been the KGB’s longest serving double agent, the purported Bolshie spy is played by eighty-four-year-old Judi Dench, who won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for 1998’s Shakespeare in Love and has had six other Oscar nominations. Her credits include several stints in espionage thrillers, as James Bond’s covert operations boss “M.”

When Joan embarks on her ill-advised plan to transfer N-top secrets to the Ruskies, Moscow was London’s ally in the crusade against fascism. Furthermore, English scientists are wary of letting the United States have nuclear hegemony over not only the USSR and Britain, but the rest of the world.

The Guardian’s review of Red Joan correctly observes that Dame Judi is “underused” during her segments. And while it’s exciting to watch historical depictions of the left fighting Franco, director Nunn’s back-and-forth in time quickly wears out its welcome.

The history Nunn presents in Red Joan is indeed fascinating, but his old-fashioned depictions and dramatizations are one-dimensional and generally fall flat. Despite its promising flashback structure, Red Joan rarely rises above being a form of filmed theater and never becomes, alas, a truly realized feature film. The subject matter deserved better.

Get the latest Progressive news

Sign up for our free email newsletter!

The Progressive Magazine

• Address Change
• Current Issue
• Gift Subscription
• Subscriber Services
• Subscription Renewal
• More Ways to Give
• Donate a car or other vehicle

Special Projects

• Public Schools Advocate
•   > About
•   > Our Education Fellows
• Progressive Perspectives
•   > Clinics
• Privacy Policy
• Internships
• Writers Guidelines

The Progressive Inc. publishes The Progressive magazine plus Progressive.org and Public Schools Advocate.

© 2024 • The Progressive Inc. • 931 E. Main Street, Suite 10 • Madison, Wisconsin 53703 • (608) 257-4626

RED JOAN – Review

Judi Dench plays a widowed retired librarian living a quiet suburban life who is suddenly arrested for spying in the Cold War, in the fact-inspired RED JOAN. Director Trevor Nunn based his film on a shocking real spy case, when an innocent-seeming older woman was arrested by the British Secret Service for passing classified information about the atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union in the early days of the Cold War. Told in part as the harmless-looking older woman is interrogated and in flashback as a young physics student recruited for the war effort, Joan Stanley relives the events of her life that led to the accusation.

The screenplay by Lindsay Shapiro is more inspired by than based on the sensational story of real spy Melita Norwood, an unassuming 87-year-old suburban widow arrested for espionage in 1999. In RED JOAN, the fictional character is named Joan Stanley. The film toggles back and forth between the octogenarian Joan, played by Judi Dench, and her younger self, played by Sophie Cookson. The spy tale is well-acted and well-shot, filled with fine period details and locations. The problem, for at least some audiences, is that the film shifts tone as it shifts between its present and past. In its present, it is a subtle character study unfolding as the older Joan is interrogated, while in the past, it is steamy spy thriller, which makes is feel a bit like two different films. In both time periods, the film presents a complicated picture of a women grappling with complex emotions, divided loyalties and confused ideas about patriotism, in a world that seems on the verge of nuclear war.

The flashback story takes us to Cambridge University before World War II, where young student Joan (Cookson) meets Leo (Tom Hughes, who played Prince Albert on BBC’s “Victoria”), a handsome young Russian/German Jewish refugee. Joan is a quiet, gifted physics student who is drawn to Leo and his adventurous, high-spirited cousin Sonya (Tereza Sbrova), because they are just so much fun. Joan accompanies the two charismatic newcomers to the Commie film screenings and events they organize on campus, less because of any interest in communism than her fondness for them. Joan quickly becomes fast friends with Sonya, and eventually falls into a passionate affair with the seductive but elusive Leo.

As the older Joan points out in the film, in those pre-World War II days, communism or the Soviet Union were not seen as threatening, and there was even a little fad of interest in the 1930s. As World War II breaks out, the Soviet Union becomes a British ally. Although Joan’s interest in her friends’ communist ideas has long faded, her personal history ties to the Russians and their circle remain and complicate her life.

If RED JOAN had stuck to the story in the past, it could have developed into a steamy, exciting spy thriller. But Trevor Nunn, a director steeped in theater, has other plans for this film beyond popcorn-munching entertainment. The film returns to the present periodically, which gives us more time with the always-wonderful Judi Dench and also allows her character to describe her rather complicated, even confused, reasons for doing what she did. A key point is her concern about preventing another war, as she has the misguided if well-meaning idea that peace has a better chance if both sides have the bomb.

It is a idea discussed by several characters in the flashback sequences but the anti-war theme is not the only one that runs through the film. A strong feminist aspect also emerges, as Joan’s brilliance in physics is consistently ignored by the men working on the war effort, who think she is better suited to typing up their research. Only Max (Stephen Campbell Moore), the head of the British atom bomb project, recognizes Joan’s remarkable gift for physics and recruits her as his assistant. But she still does the typing and filing.

As the atomic bomb project advances, things get complicated for Joan, both romantically and ethically. At first, the team works along side the Americans in the race to beat the Germans to the atomic bomb, but then the Americans stop sharing research. The British project continues anyway but in a more complicated political atmosphere. a situation that becomes even more complex after the war. The shifting political alliances worry Joan, who sees the Russians go from allies to adversaries, and the Americans go from collaborative to secretive about atomic research.

Even though her work takes her from England to Canada, she is still periodically contacted by Sonya, Leo and their commie friends, with Leo pressing her hard to share information despite her repeated refusals. Meanwhile, in the story’s present, the older Joan grapples with the pressure of the interrogation, and secrets she kept from her grown son, some due to the Official Secrets Act and some not. The son reels as information about his mother’s past surfaces.

Perhaps Nunn tried to do a bit too much with this film, layering this woman’s secret past with themes of feminist and anti-war sentiment. When the film focuses on the characters in the past, it builds a driving thriller tension, as events push Joan to the emotional edge. In the present, the story is more narrow and relational, focusing on the character’s inner turmoil and her relationship with her shocked son. The shift in style is sometimes jarring, making RED JOAN feel like two different films rather a single story, despite the superb acting, well-crafted production values and good intentions.

RED JOAN opens Friday, May 10, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

You may also like...

• Sundance Live
• SXSW 2010 Film Festival Live Coverage
• Twitter Feed
• WAMG Text Service

Copyright © 2013 Lanier Media

Latest News

Daddio – review, janet planet – review, fancy dance – review, a quiet place: day one – review, welcome to gotham city – prime video releases first trailer for “batman: caped crusader”, see tom hanks and robin wright in first look for robert zemeckis’ here.

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Red Joan (2019)

April 14, 2019 by Robert Kojder

Red Joan , 2019.

Directed by Trevor Nunn. Starring Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Tom Hughes, Tereza Srbová, Laurence Spellman, Kevin Fuller, Ciarán Owens, Stephen Campbell, and Moore Ben Miles.

The story of Joan Stanley, who was exposed as the KGB’s longest-serving British spy.

Scientists and physics experts being exploited for the purposes of war generally make for fascinating character studies, and on paper the story of Joan Stanley/ Red Joan (directed by Trevor Nunn from a script written by Lindsay Shapero, but most importantly inspired by the life of Melita Norwood) appears to be a worthwhile exploration of a relatively unknown figure. Rather than functioning as a spy movie about a betrayal of one’s country, it operates on the basis of morality and doing what one feels is right to prevent the very makers of catastrophic destruction from being eager to drop atomic bombs on one another willy-nilly. There’s also promise in casting the great Judi Dench and the rising Sophie Cookson playing the parts of Joan at respective points in her life.

Unfortunately, it’s not long before the negative vibes come settling in, as Red Joan adopts an uninspired and bland formula of flipping between past and present as present-day Joan is interrogated for her past crimes following the passing of an important colleague, with each inquiry allowing the film to dive right into the past and show things from her own young and naïve and unknowing (at this point in time the verdict on Joseph Stalin was somewhat up in the air) perspective. As the sessions go on, health problems arise for present-day Joan, rendering the whole thing one terrible cliché.

However, a far greater crime than anything this altered historical figure ever did is how badly the material here lets Sophie Cookson down, who is fine in the popular Kingsman franchise to the point of showing promise for leading roles, even if they are the blandest style of biopics. Instead of really getting into the psyche of this woman and the complex choices she had to make while working for the KGB, Red Joan gets so caught up in her romantic life that it feels like the choices she makes come from love and not the greater good of the world. Obviously, having a fling with a communist party sympathizer and another passionate relationship with one of her superiors are going to influence her decisions on some level, but they don’t need to be the entire movie. By the time Judi Dench is professing to her son (who has been kept in the dark about all of this) that she never betrayed her country and that she was trying to make the world a better place, it rings hollow considering so much of the movie is fixated on the on-and-off intricacies between her and her significant others.

There’s also a bafflingly unnecessary shot of nudity from Sophie Cookson that feels like some sort of desperate attempt to make a few more bucks at the box office (not that the movie is going to make much, but still). Rarely do I ever harp on these things, but there are three moments of physical intimacy in the film with two of them being implied sexual intercourse that cuts to the next day before anyone can undress. Meanwhile, one of them cuts to a gratuitous 2-3 seconds shot of Sophie Cookson nude before cutting once again to the next day. Maybe the filmmakers shot an entire sex scene that they felt was not needed but also didn’t want to go to waste, but if that’s the case why not just show the whole thing? A 101-minute movie would only be extended by another minute. Also, it’s not a prudish thing at all; it’s just awkwardly edited to the point of worth questioning the intentions behind it.

That might only be a small problem within the direction though, as the main blunder with Red Joan is that it’s just not very engaging. The story of this woman is interesting and the events that unfold are mildly intriguing, but it’s also just coasting along from plot point to plot point with little pop in terms of narrative execution or cinematic flair. It’s about as exciting as reading Wikipedia, which is frustrating considering the standoffish nature and harrowing results of building atomic bombs should generate concern and emotion. Not even the small scene of young Joan watching footage of the Hiroshima bomb dropping elicits any kind of reaction; it’s another groan-worthy amateur hour directorial decision.

It also must be said that the present day//flashback juxtapositioning doesn’t add anything to the character, mostly because Judi Dench is going through the motions while Sophie Cookson, despite being a letdown at every narrative juncture, is looking for anything to cling onto and get us invested in the character and story. She does is find a job as anyone can with such little to work with; hopefully in the future, she receives better starring roles for more tantalizing projects. Red Joan is not a horrible movie by any means, but one with its focus in all the wrong places and containing no urgency to anything going on.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, friend me on Facebook, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , check out my personal non-Flickering Myth affiliated  Patreon , or email me at [email protected]

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:

The Essential Donald Sutherland Films

X-Men: Days of Future Past at 10: An ambitious timey-wimey superhero flick

The Best 90s and 00s Horror Movies That Rotten Tomatoes Hates!

2000s Horror Movies That Don’t Deserve the Hate

Five More Sylvester Stallone Movies That Need a Sequel After Cliffhanger

The Film Feud of the 90s: Steven Seagal vs Jean-Claude Van Damme

The Must-See Horror Movies From Every Decade

The Best Love Triangle Movies To Watch After Challengers

Fox Marvel Characters Who Need Redemption in Deadpool 3

House of the Dragon: All the Important Houses in Season 2 and Who They Fight for Explained

• Comic Books
• Video Games
• Toys & Collectibles
• Articles and Opinions
• About Flickering Myth
• Write for Flickering Myth
• Advertise on Flickering Myth
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy

Red Joan Review: Judi Dench Is Wasted in Dull Spy Drama

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

MaXXXine Review: Dismembering and Deconstructing Horror and Fame in the '80s

The inheritance (2024) official trailer, unsinkable trailer: a star-studded audio drama explores a true ww2 story.

Red Joan turns an incredible espionage story into a lethargic and boring film. Melita Norwood was a British woman who spied for the Soviet Union during and after World War II. The information she smuggled was directly responsible for the Soviets acquiring the atomic bomb. Red Joan , adapted from the novel by Jennie Rooney, is a fictional account based on Norwood's activities. What should be a riveting thriller is told with a plodding delivery.

Dame Judi Dench stars as the older Joan in modern times. A white-haired, genteel grandmother, she is arrested by the British government for espionage and treason. Her son (Ben Miles) is outraged by the charges. This must be a mistake. His mother spent her life as a librarian. It's only when he sits through her interrogation is the shocking truth revealed.

Sophie Cookson co-stars as the younger Joan. In the mid thirties, she was a reserved student studying physics at Cambridge. The only woman in her class, she meets the vibrant, sexually uninhibited Russian, Sonya (Tereza Srbova). Joan is taken by Sonya to a meeting of communists. She is captivated by the magnetic presence of Sonya's cousin Leo (Tom Hughes), a diehard Marxist and Stalinist. When the second world war breaks out, Joan is sent to work as an assistant to a critical government scientist (Stephen Campbell Moore). Her access to the British atomic weapons program made her an invaluable asset as a Soviet spy.

Red Joan is ninety percent flashback. Sophie Cookson has nearly all of the screen time as young Joan. Judi Dench isn't given anything to do, but look down or away wistfully as the character remembers her youthful transgressions. She's essentially wasted in the film. This isn't a knock on Cookson's performance. She does well with the tepid material given. There's just a huge imbalance to the plot. Famed theater director Trevor Nunn, who's won numerous awards on the West End and Broadway, needed to spread the wealth between the actresses. It's odd to have Judi Dench and underuse her. The granny next door being outed as a Russian agent is a helluva surprise. Red Joan doesn't spend nearly enough time on the fallout or reasons for her capture.

Joan's romantic relationships are the primary arcs, not the actual spying. This is understandable to a point. Her infatuation with Leo was the gateway to treachery. Trevor Nunn and screenwriter Lindsay Shapero get too embroiled in melodrama. The best scenes in the film are Joan trying to cover her tracks and investigating the depths of the spy ring. These moments have decent tension, but are fleeting. Then we have her pining over lovers entanglements. There was meat on the bone for a crisp, multi-layered storyline. Her betrayal was instrumental in evening the atomic scoreboard. Red Joan mildly explores her political motivations. What we get is a drab soap opera with a sprinkle of espionage.

An opportunity was missed for a far more engaging film. Red Joan has an able cast, but the film doesn't do their performances justice. It's a bummer seeing Judi Dench, who was so forceful as M in the Bond films, regulated as a meek secondary character. Red Joan is distributed in the US by IFC Films .

• Movie and TV Reviews
• Red Joan (2018)

The Best Live TV Streaming Services With Free Trial

The cheapest live tv streaming services (< $40).

• Power Book III: Raising Kanan
• Doctor Who: 60th Anniversary Specials

Which Netflix Country has Interstellar?

Which netflix country has each movie of the hunger games.

• Lost Cities Revealed with Albert Lin
• Which Netflix Country Has Attack on Titan?
• Which Netflix Country Has One Piece?
• Dragons: The Nine Realms
• Interstellar
• Each Movie of The Hunger Games
• Attack on Titan
• The Big Bang Theory
• Each Harry Potter Movie
• The Walking Dead
• Rick & Morty
• Sci-Fi & Fantasy
• Science Fiction
• Documentary
• To Her (2017)
• Kingdom 3: The Flame of Fate (2023)
• Totally Killer (2023)
• Stranger Things
• Barbie (2023)
• John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
• The Queen's Gambit
• Peaky Blinders
• Breaking Bad
• The Last of Us
• The Dark Knight (2008)
• The Buccaneers
• The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
• The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
• King Kong (2005)
• Sherlock Holmes
• Pride and Prejudice
• Scrooge (1951)
• Grease (1978)
• The Departed (2006)
• I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)
• Men in Black (1997)
• Full Metal Jacket (1987)
• The Mosquito Coast
• Prime Video
• CBS All Access

Dame Judi Dench gives a commanding performance as always, but this time-hopping spy thriller suffers from tepid, made-for-BBC delivery.

At the start of Red Joan, a brief caption informs viewers that this movie is inspired by true events. To be more accurate, it is an adaptation of a book that told a fictional story inspired by true events. So you true story junkies out there, take note.

For me, though, I felt a bit of zip at how far removed from a “true story” the movie actually stood. None of that pesky reality getting in the way of telling a ripping yarn and all that.

Sadly, I was mistaken.

To backtrack a bit, Red Joan tells the story of Joan Stanley ( Dame Judi Dench ), a pensioner who finds herself arrested after the death of a high-ranking official reveals him to be a spy and suggests she was as well. As the British government interrogates her about her actions before, during, and after World War II, the film takes us back in time to show us exactly what young Joan ( Sophie Cookson ) had been up to at the time.

An intelligent college student underestimated by many of the men around her, she is often able to move free of detection. Her intelligence sees her graduating from university with a degree in physics and an excellent reputation making her a strong candidate for Britain’s version of the Manhattan Project. Her gender and all the biases that come with it make her an attractive recruit for the KGB who covet the nuclear secrets their WWII allies claim to be sharing with them but have long since stopped.

A sound enough premise to be sure. The far-removed true story of Melita Norwood under her 40 years of spying—as opposed to Joan’s mere handful—holds the promise of being quit a tense thriller. Red Joan , alas, shows little interest in being thrilling.

Acting wise, everyone delivers good performances. Cookson, in particular, keeps herself on a low boil showing us both how she could be passionate to betray those around her and controlled enough that they would never suspect a thing. That sense of control, however, extends to the rest of the film, flattening its intensity.

Red Joan , alas, shows little interest in being thrilling.

Spying can be dangerous business, but the movie never lets you feel that. Even as it literally tells us that the price of treason in Britain is hanging or shows us what happens to one of Joan’s lovers who is suspected of not being loyal to the cause, a viewer’s pace never quickens. The story structure hardly helps things. Every time we cut from the past to the present, what little tension has been built, escapes like air out a pierced tire.

And those scenes in the present? Mostly Dench looking uncomfortable and her interrogators questioning her in raised but never emotional voices. Only her son Nick ( Ben Miles ) brings any kind of emotional heat to the present-day scenes, making his final choice all the more confusing and ill-conceived.

The story of a principled woman in the late 30’s committing treason to save the world from further wars has such potential for power that one can understand why all the players were attracted to it. Alas, in the end, Red Joan misuses their talents on a tepid delivery that sidesteps passion when it could give us insight and dodges intensity when it could draw us in.

Read next: The Spool's Best New Releases

Rashida jones is anything but sunny and that’s great.

By: Tim Stevens

The star plays unpleasant with aplomb elevating Sunny, AppleTV+'s near-future robot caper, above its increasingly complicated plot mechanics.

Thelma sets a senior citizen on an Impossible Mission

By: B.L. Panther

Josh Margolin's charming action-comedy lets June Squibb have the kind of "still got it" energy as Tom Cruise.

Streaming guides

The praises of live TV streaming services don’t need to be further sung. By now, we all know that compared to clunky, commitment-heavy cable, live TV is cheaper and much easier to manage. But just in case you’re still on the fence about jumping over to the other side, or if you’re just unhappy with ... The Best Live TV Streaming Services With Free Trial

Cord-cutting once carried the promise of reducing live TV costs, but with most services nearing a $100 per month, that statement checks less every day. That said, there is a handful of cord-cutting services with reasonable monthly prices. Below we list them.

How to Watch Power Book III: Raising Kanan Season 3

Season 3 of the hotly anticipated Power spin-off, Power Book III: Raising Kanan, is arriving on Starz soon, so you know what that means: it’s the ’90s again in The Southside, and we’re back with the Thomas family as they navigate the ins and outs of the criminal underworld they’re helping build. Mekai Curtis is ... How to Watch Power Book III: Raising Kanan Season 3

How to Watch Doctor Who: 60th Anniversary Specials

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re so back! To celebrate Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary, the BBC is producing a three-episode special starring none other than the Tenth/Fourteenth Doctor himself, David Tennant. And to the supreme delight of fans (that would be me, dear reader), the Doctor will be joined by old-time companion Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) and ... How to Watch Doctor Who: 60th Anniversary Specials

Maybe you’ve just seen Oppenheimer and have the strongest urge to marathon—or more fun yet, rank!—all of Christopher Nolan’s films. Or maybe you’re one of the few who haven’t seen Interstellar yet. If you are, then you should change that immediately; the dystopian epic is one of Nolan’s best, and with that incredible twist in ... Which Netflix Country has Interstellar?

For whatever reason, The Hunger Games series isn’t available in the same countries around the world. You’ll find the first and second (aka the best) installments in Hong Kong, for instance, but not the third and fourth. It’s a frustrating dilemma, especially if you don’t even have a single entry in your region, which is ... Which Netflix Country Has Each Movie of The Hunger Games?

How to Watch ESPN With A Free Trial

One of the major concerns people have before cutting the cord is potentially losing access to live sports. But the great thing about live TV streaming services is that you never lose that access. Minus the contracts and complications of cable, these streaming services connect you to a host of live channels, including ESPN.  So ... How to Watch ESPN With A Free Trial

How to Watch Paramount Network With a Free Trial

To date, Paramount Network has only two original shows on air right now: Yellowstone and Bar Rescue. The network seems to have its hands full with on-demand streaming service Paramount+, which is constantly stacked with a fresh supply of new shows. But Yellowstone and Bar Rescue are so sturdy and expansive that the network doesn’t ... How to Watch Paramount Network With a Free Trial

How to Watch WE TV With a Free Trial

Previously “Women’s Entertainment,” We TV has since rebranded to accurately reflect its name and be a more inclusive lifestyle channel. It’s home to addictive reality gems like Bold and Bougie, Bridezillas, Marriage Boot Camp, and The Untold Stories of Hip Hop. And when it’s not airing original titles, it has on syndicated shows like 9-1-1, ... How to Watch WE TV With a Free Trial

How to Watch TNT Sports With A Free Trial

For many sports fans, TNT is a non-negotiable. It broadcasts NBA, MLB, NHL, college basketball, and All Elite Wrestling matches. And, as a bonus, it also has reruns of shows like Supernatural, Charmed, and NCIS, as well as films like The Avengers, Dune, and Justice League. But while TNT used to be a cable staple, ... How to Watch TNT Sports With A Free Trial

How to Watch Comedy Central With a Free Trial

It’s no coincidence that many of today’s biggest comedians found their footing on Comedy Central: the channel is a bastion of emerging comic talents. It served as a playground for people like Nathan Fielder (Fielder For You), Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson (Broad City), Tim Robinson (Detroiters), and Dave Chappelle (Chappelle’s Show) before they shot ... How to Watch Comedy Central With a Free Trial

How to Watch FX With a Free Trial

You’d be hard-pressed to find a bad show airing on FX. The channel has made a name for itself as a bastion of high-brow TV, along with HBO and AMC. It’s produced shows like Atlanta, Fargo, The Americans, Archer, and more recently, Shogun. But because it’s owned by Disney, it still airs several blockbusters in ... How to Watch FX With a Free Trial

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘my lady jane’ review: emily bader reinvents a luckless royal in prime video’s amusing if insubstantial historical romp.

Everyone knows Jane Grey was beheaded for claiming the throne after the death of King Edward VI. This alt-history fantasy presupposes: Maybe she wasn't?

By Angie Han

Television Critic

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

Related Stories

'the night manager' season 2 production team brings hangtime international pictures aboard, christina ricci to voice catwoman in matt reeves' 'batman: caped crusader', my lady jane.

Really, “different” doesn’t begin to describe it. A few minutes later, My Lady Jane reveals that it is less an alt-history than a full-on fantasy. The biggest split in 16th century England is not between Catholics and Protestants, but Verities, i.e., regular humans, and Ethians, a violently persecuted underclass of people who — pause for dramatic effect — have the ability to shapeshift into animals . While Jane is a Verity, her increasing sympathy for the Ethians’ cause will prove to be especially dangerous during her sudden and unexpected rise to power, especially once she lands in the crosshairs of the virulently anti-Ethian Mary.

My Lady Jane leans hard on the idea of Jane as an “intellectual rebel” who bucks against the conventions of her era (which really just means she falls right in line with the more recent stereotype of a Strong Female Character).

Alas, her mother, Frances (Anna Chancellor), has other ideas, and quickly marries her off to Guildford (Edward Bluemel), the rakish son of a prominent lord ( Rob Brydon ‘s Dudley). Though she demands a divorce basically from day one — “How modern,” retorts Guildford — it hardly takes a diehard romantic to guess that their obvious mutual attraction might complicate those plans.

But Jane isn’t the only part of My Lady Jane that eschews stuffy period-piece cliches. Its storytelling is puckish and irreverent, and eager to remind you that it’s puckish and irreverent.

An Alan Cumming-lite narrator (Ollie Chris) comments on every plot beat with slang-infused snark. The soundtrack is stuffed with female-led covers of iconic rock songs like “Rebel Rebel” and “Tainted Love.” The courtly intrigue frequently takes on a goofy, vulgar bent. Mary is portrayed as a vicious brat whose entire bid for power rests on the fact that Edward’s adviser Seymour ( Dominic Cooper ) can’t get enough of ye olde S&M play, while Frances gets all her best intel from younger noblemen who pop boners at the sight of her.

And while the narration is overused, the unnamed voice does get in some good cracks. “If therapists were invented in 1553, our brooding tortured hero would be a different man and this would be a different story,” he sighs in mock sympathy as Guildford mopes about a formative childhood trauma. “But they weren’t. And he isn’t. And it can’t be. So here we are.”

For all the talk of how uniquely brave and brilliant and empathetic Jane is, however, My Lady Jane lacks the substance to match. Jane and Guildford’s delicious sexual tension aside — Bader and Bluemel give great annoyed-but-turned-on face — none of the relationships run deep enough to provoke real emotion. At times, it’s difficult to tell if they’re even meant to be sincere.

Jane’s social justice mission rings hollow as well. Unlike, say, its Prime Video sibling The Boys , My Lady Jane has no interest in drawing direct parallels to our world. But it has little interest in the Ethians as their own culture or community, either, give or take a few supporting individuals like Jane’s erstwhile friend Susannah ( Extraordinary ‘s Máiréad Tyers). Jane plays the part of the righteous freedom fighter without any of the pesky complications of real history, but also without the gravitas that a more richly developed fictional universe might have provided.

But somewhere in all this breathless reinterpreting, Jane Grey herself gets lost. Rather than expand on a life that could have been, My Lady Jane shoves her instead into someone else’s idea of a cheeky little fairy tale.

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Eric dane says he was “let go” from ‘grey’s anatomy’ because he “wasn’t the same guy” they hired, martin mull, funnyman and ‘fernwood 2 night’ star, dies at 80, ‘the bear’ star lionel boyce on marcus’ eulogy scene, season 3 cliffhanger, and whether anyone on the show is ok, ariana madix on intense ‘love island usa’ season 6 drama: “i hope to host this show forever”, will forte boards tina fey’s ‘four seasons’ series at netflix, tv ratings: biden-trump debate draws 51m viewers, way below 2020.