THE LOST KING
Looking for Richard…
Could this Richard III yarn be an awards contender? Remains to be seen.
TOUT 7 OCTOBER
he very British love of an underdog and a hot historical discovery fuels this offbeat true-life dramedy, following an amateur historian’s 2012 crusade to find the long-lost body of prime Shakespeare villain Richard III. Sally Hawkins gets right under the skin of fragile, M.E.-stricken Philippa, who develops a deliciously nerdy obsession with the hunchbacked king, when all people see is her own illness.
Screenwriters Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope find a wry, utterly British comedy in the academic scorn showered on Philippa during the battles she fought to action her spine-tingling hunch about Richard’s whereabouts. If the film doesn’t have the punch or pathos of Philomena, the writers’ previous outing with Stephen Frears, there’s a scrappy likeability here that offsets the slow pace of her painstaking research. However, it can’t resolve the odd mismatch between Philippa’s mystic meetings with her beloved Richard and the otherwise down-to-earth framing. This is a story whose TV-movie backdrops (pubs, park benches, dingy council offices) Frears lightens by concentrating on his fine leads.
Coogan is a low-key delight as Philippa’s sceptical ex-husband (“Boys! Your mother’s found Richard III”). But it’s Hawkins’ Philippa, growing from shy housewife to doughty campaigner, that drives a gripping example - like The Dig and Ammonite - of how a determined amateur can remake history.