Lady Jane

With its emphasis on youthful idealism despoiled by treacherous, manipulative adults, Lady Jane emerges as a tragic historical romance tinged with a strong 1960s feeling...Performances are all top-drawer, beginning with newcomer Helena Bonham Carter in the title role.

It’s not only poignant but also fun and unabashedly entertaining in the way that “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” still is. And it does have it all: authentic, sumptuous 16th-Century settings awash with warm Tudor brick, a splendid cast adorned with jewel-encrusted costumes, palace intrigue and, best of all, a pair of star-crossed young lovers who are irresistible.

Despite these lapses in decorum, Jane makes an impressive Tudor "Romeo and Juliet," full of pomp and circumstance. [7 Feb 1986, p.N19]

At the very least, Lady Jane ought to summon more emotion than it does. But the early part of it is so reserved, and the latter part so incongruously fulsome, that it never manages to draw any deep response - not even when a beheading costs the hapless young Jane her luxuriant, Brooke Shields-like hair.

Despite Trevor Nunn's direction, this gorgeously photographed travesty of history doesn't omit a single cliche of the costume genre and feels even longer than its 142-minute running time. Fans of RSC-style scenery-chewing will not, however, be disappointed.

Overall, the movie is cloddishly composed, with awkward zooms and theatrical blocking. This is one of those movies where characters speak in asides to the audience; Nunn has reinvented the proscenium arch.

Despite its radical gloss, this over-long, lifeless epic of doomed true love falls into all the predictable traps: excessive pageantry, Monty Python-like peasants, dialogue that drips with sentiment, and even the sight of young lovers running through rural England.