SheenaDi
This is not just the historical tale of two royals forced into a marriage for political reasons, it is also the story of a husband and wife with all the failings and successes a marriage can bring.Juana the daughter of the great Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella is sent to Flanders to marry the dashing Philip, known through out the word as Philip the Handsome. At first glance they fall in lust, that lust turns into love, for Juana at least, but for Philip is the love of power, as with the death of her older siblings Juana is now the heiress to the throne of Spain. It's the story of a jealous, clingy wife madly and deeply in love with her philandering bored husband who is using her as a pawn to get what he wants. The acting is brilliant, especially by the female lead. By the end of the movie you feel so completely attached to her you want her to be happy, you hate Philip and his callousness for destroying her. I watched the movie in Spanish and it was amazing, a second time I watched it with subtitles and can say I understood little more, it is a film that transcends language. If you love epics, if you love history, if you love love stories you must see this movie.
Armand
an aesthetic delight. a fragile story. decent acting - not extraordinary but useful for suggest. a film of costumes and invitation to discover the real story of Juana. good intentions, a lot of colors and large oasis of ambiguity, influences of soap opera and few scenes who escapes from the sketch status of film. a beautiful movie. not profound, far to be original, but interesting for atmosphere recreation, for the performance of Giuliano Gemma , for hard work to convince of Pilar de Ayala and for the air of old rose. its sin - maybe the not great courage to do a more serious work. but that could be a detail. in fact, a charming image of a Spanish character. not serious, not profound, not extraordinary. only beautiful. and decent.
Robert J. Maxwell
Is there something special that draws writers to stories that mix royalty with sex? I don't mean contemporary stuff, in which the princess runs off with the chauffeur, but stories like this, historical epics full of billowing robes, stone walls, and someone hidden behind the curtain. Think of the many monarchs with sexual and emotional hang ups -- Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth and Essex, Othello who, like the daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand here, loved not wisely but too well. They've all had movies made about them, whereas nobody has ever made a movie about Ethelred the Black or Ethelblack the Red.An operatic story of Joan of Castile, married as a teen ager to Philip the Archduke of Flanders or something. One of those arranged marriages under dun skies that never clear up. She's sent to Flanders virgo intacta and after a perfunctory ceremony Philip carts her off to bed. She evidently undergoes the transport of St. Teresa and she loves him too. She bears him child after child, never seeming to grow beaten under the strain of her fecundity. She even gets a tickle out of breast feeding the baby, a scandalous act at the time, but why not? It releases the hormone oxytocin which induces a mild high.Philip is a different story. He's tall, dark, handsome, muscular, and very virile. He has money and power and all the social graces. Other women fall for him immediately. In fact, he resembles me quite a lot. Alas, though, he can't keep his pantalones on and he's soon doing various courtesans and ladies-in-waiting and whatnot, one of them a passionate but duplicitous Moor who tries to put a spell on him. She doesn't need to try very hard.By this time, Queen Isabella -- she's the one who invested in Columbus -- is dead and Joan becomes in effect the Queen of Spain and Philip is her "consort." Even if you don't know exactly what a consort is, as I don't, it sounds pretty cheap, doesn't it? And who are you? "I am the queen's CONSORT. I consort with the queen, and sometimes she consorts with me when she doesn't have a headache." The happy couple move to Castile. Philip brings his advisers with him and they suggest that the queen is getting a little too jealous over Philip's peccadilloes and that maybe she's mad and Philip should take over and become ruler of Spain in her place. And, to be frank, Joan is acting a little crazy. She challenges her sexy Moor rival to a sword fight. She has her defenders at court but she evidently doesn't care as much about the throne as she does for her husband. Otherwise, when the parliament accuse her of being mad, why would she say, "Mad? I'm not mad, just terribly hurt." Well, she didn't say it. Groucho Marx did, but you get the idea. She's more angry and anxious about Philip's infidelity than anything else.Pilar Lopez de Ayala is Joan, the principal figure, and she's convincing as a queen. There's something regal about her looks, chiefly her large ears, I think, and that promontory of a nose. She has fierce, coal-black irises and is quite handsome. I don't know why Philip had to go nosing around elsewhere. It doesn't do either of them any good. Philip dies of plague and Joan is confined for life to a cell, until her oldest child is of age to rule.There are no momentous battles or duels. It's not a swashbuckler. But the set dressing, wardrobe, and make up seem suitable to the period. It's all rather colorful, though never gaudy. Not under those clouds.Almost accidentally, the film raises an interesting question: What constitutes insanity -- in a ruler or in anybody else? On the screen she seems more consumed by jealousy, more reckless than nuts. But reckless rulers are hardly unknown.
