Director: Chloé Zhao

Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn

Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s book (with O’Farrell credited as co-writer), Chloe Zhao’s speculative period drama foregrounds the female partner in The Bard’s marriage. Indeed, Paul Mescal’s Shakespeare isn’t even mentioned by name until the third act. When we first encounter Jessie Buckley’s Agnes (sic) Hathaway, she is nestled in the base of a tree, her red dress standing out against the foliage, establishing her otherworldly nature. The locals believe Agnes is the daughter of a forest witch, something which her predilection for wandering the woods collecting herbs, does little to dispel. But the young Shakespeare, who is tutoring children in Latin to pay off his father’s debts, is transfixed by her. He wins Agnes over, but both of their families are opposed to a marriage. However, when Agnes finds she is pregnant, the families have no choice but to go along. Agnes gives birth to a daughter Judith, then twins, a boy, Hamnet and a girl, Susanna. Agnes believes that on her deathbed only two children will be present, so worries about the health of the twins, while accepting that, because of his burgeoning career, her husband must relocate to London. When a tragedy occurs, the couple react in vastly different ways with Agnes left to pick up the pieces. The first act is the strongest with Zhao cinematographer Lukasz Zal skilfully contrasting Agnes’s more elemental nature against her husband’s more conventional modern lifestyle, with the wild verdant exteriors contrasting with the more angular interiors. The canopy of the couple’s bed even resembles a theatre proscenium arch. Jessie Buckley is impressively fierce, feral even, as Agnes, but the story is overwrought and overdetermined, and suffers from serious missteps in the third act, with the concluding scene almost feeling like an act of sabotage.

David Willoughby

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