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IFC

Director Claire McCarthy aims to straddle both sides of an artistic divide with Ophelia. Her adaptation of Lisa Klein’s young adult novel—a reimagining of Hamlet that centers on the young maiden who the Danish prince drives to madness and suicide—tries to hide a dark, seamy feminist fable within the trappings of a sumptuous costume drama. That’s clear from the opening moment, which finds our heroine (Daisy Ridley) floating dead in a lake. It’s lit and framed to evoke John Everett Millais’ painting of Ophelia, but the determined voiceover (“You may think you know my story…”) is a wobbly interpretation of Sunset Boulevard.


It’s an awkward journey of self-discovery, as clenched-jaw feminism spars with garment-rending melodrama.


From that point on, McCarthy never seems to find quite the right balance of moods and elements. The story charges ahead, following Ophelia from her tomboyish childhood to her days filling baths and acquiring a mysterious “tonic” to soothe the frazzled spirit of Queen Gertrude (Naomi Watts). Just as quickly, Ophelia finds herself in a fitful, uneasy romance with Hamlet (George MacKay), at which point McCarthy and screenwriter Semi Chellas start to veer away from Shakespeare’s source material. It’s an awkward journey of self-discovery, as clenched-jaw feminism spars with garment-rending melodrama.

The shifting moods within Ophelia are never so jarring as to be a distraction, however: McCarthy patches over the rougher spots by setting the story at a brisk pace while still landing memorable sequences, and she’s assisted by a well-chosen cast. Ridley is solid, if tenuous, as she plots Ophelia’s course from under Gertrude’s wing; she’s much better at finding the compassion within the character, even as she’s being pulled in multiple directions at once. Watts, meanwhile, is spectacular—in a dual role as the queen and as the mysterious woods-dweller who cooks up the black tonic for her majesty—as is Clive Owen as the duplicitous Claudius. Their work may not be enough to fully stitch up the holes in Ophelia, but all together, it holds enough together to keep viewers from protesting too much.


Ophelia is now available on demand.