Edward II

Derek Jarman, UK, 1991, 90 minutes

Possibly Derek Jarman's best. He films Christopher Marlowe's play in a sparse, austere style with blank walls and strong lighting creating an enclosed, highly stylised setting. Stephen Waddington plays the king, unsettling the military-industrial junta of his courtiers by flaunting his relationship with Piers Gaveston.

Edward's queen, Isabella, is played by Tilda Swinton who gives an icy, terrifying performance, somewhere between Grace Kelly and Evita Peron. The character may be given a hard deal in the film, which shows her exacting a monstrous, vampiristic revenge when she's rejected by her husband, but her demonisation may be a crucial part of the Jarmanising of the play, by which the barely-concealed sexual sub-text is brought full-bloodedly to the fore, creating a parable of gay martyrdom in the face of institutionalised homophobia. In this vein Jarman mixes in telling anachronisms, like the double-breasted moral-majority chorus and Edward and Gaveston's M&S pyjamas, to bridge the historical gulf and make the film unavoidably contemporary; thus Marlowe's Elizabethan dialogue rubs shoulders with Outrage and Queer as Fuck slogans.

Review by Richard Dewes
Taken from EUFS Programme 1992-93