The other one

by RICHARD JONES

HANDS up if you knew the ill-fated Anne Boleyn had a sister, Mary, who was also fancied by King Henry VIII ?

It's a true story, if very scantily documented, from around the mid-point of the 16th century.

In director Justin Chadwick's lush period drama Natalie Portman plays Anne Boleyn, Scarlett Johansson is her sister Mary - the other Boleyn - while Eric Bana is the lusty English monarch bent on marital as well as constitutional reforms.

Driven by their family's blind ambition to enhance their position in England the girls compete for the affections of the King.

Henry has been driven to distraction through the failure of his wife Catherine of Aragon (Ana Torrent) to bear him a son. The whole Tudor line depends on this one factor - a male heir to succeed Henry.

So Sir Thomas Boleyn (Mark Rylance) and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn (Kristin Scott Thomas) engineer the relationship between their daughters and the king.

Initially it's Anne who catches Henry's eye. But when he's injured while out on a hunting trip the senior Boleyns arrange for Mary to nurse him back to health.

So far, so good for the scheming parents and their powerful relative, the Duke of Norfolk. But not far below the surface of the royal courts of Tudor times intrigue, deceit and scandal bubbled away and Anne Boleyn is banished to France when she foolishly marries a nobleman without royal consent.

Now the King's lover, Mary falls pregnant and is confined to bed when she almost miscarries. Anne is hurriedly brought back from France to ensure Henry's attentions don't stray from the Boleyns to another comely lady-in-waiting.

Mary's baby boy is born, Anne Boleyn wins the King's undying attention and Catherine of Aragon is officially divorced.

You'll need to concentrate hard to follow all the twists and turns but the basis for this period romance, the novel by Philippa Gregory, has been fairly faithfully followed.

21 May 2008

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