The Girl King tells the story of Queen Kristina (Malin Buska), who ascends to the throne of Lutheran Sweden in the midst of a continental conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Raised by her ambitious and pious chancellor Axel Oxenstierna (Michael Nyqvist), she is expected to marry, produce an heir, and continue Sweden’s role in the war between religious powers. But even from a young age, Kristina questions the ways of Luther, and as queen, she pours her efforts into attaining continental peace and satisfying her curiosity. Part of that curiosity entails discovering her sexuality, which comes into focus when she meets the Countess Ebba Sparre (Sarah Gadon).
The film subscribes to the interpretation of history that Queen Kristina was a lesbian. The film posits that her desires and her general curiosity were the hallmarks of her reign, and that these precise qualities made it difficult to a monarch in those times. This film doesn’t offer a very rigorous examination of history. In fact, it gets pretty goofy as it attempts to depict Kristina’s passions, constructing scenes of questionable drama. But this film is also unconventionally energetic for a biopic. It doesn’t quite work, but it is certainly weird enough to be intriguing.
The film doesn’t move like a typical biopic. It feels restless and twitchy, rambling through history in almost random spurts, unwilling to define the character through singular events. The film presents Kristina as an enigma of sorts, a person led by her whims and best described through her inconsistency. The film reflects that in its form. It makes for a somewhat choppy viewing experience, but there is something intriguing in the way that the film just writes off long stretches of political and historical discourse and instead pursues what it finds interesting.
Those hoping to learn history from the film will ultimately be stymied by its shallowness and lack of rigor. The movie is all too eager to jump into fiction just to make things a little more interesting. It willfully crafts melodramatic moments that have little to do with what we know of who Kristina was. But through this vessel of warped history, the film does touch on an interesting struggle of identity, the main character caught into a complex web of emotions and loyalties, drawn from the conflicting sides of religion, politics, loyalty and passion.
And this provides a strong platform for the performances, most notably Malin Buska. The fact that the film is in English ought to get in the way of the performances, but it still mostly works. As Kristina, Buska looks at all once imperious and ill prepared. She perfectly represents the paradox at the heart of this character, wielding tremendous power yet unable to use it to free herself from the bonds of monarchy. She is a creature of curiosity and desire, which she ultimately must sublimate in the course of ruling her nation. Buska’s performance is constantly putting the character at a crossroads, the actress playing the queen as if her next move would decide the fate of the whole world.
The Girl King feels odd, but that’s no necessarily a bad thing. It’s not necessarily a good thing, either, some of the film’s eccentricities making it more difficult to really capture the essence of this history, or the import of the events taking place on screen. But one cannot totally dismiss it. The film, in its form, attempts to be a mirror for the odd personality that serves at its subject. It refuses structure, and instead carries on through whim. What the film leaves out is that Kristina’s reign and her method of ruling resulted in some disastrous things as well. And here, too, the film suffers from the surplus of whimsy. But there is still something captivating in all that mess.
My Rating:
