The Girl King

Sweden, in the fall of 1632, when King Gustav II Adolf falls on the side of the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War, his daughter Kristina becomes the nominal regent of Sweden - at the age of just six. As a result, Kristina is brought up like a boy - and given much more education than was usual for women in the 17th century. “The Girl King” grows up to become a free-spirited, culturally interested young woman - a passionate hunter who succeeds in ending the war, but whose love for her chambermaid Ebba brings her own court to the barricades. Especially as Kristina ignores all the rules of Protestantism and invites Catholic philosophers to court to learn from them... Mika Kaurismäki's ("Master Cheng in Pohjanjoki") visually stunning historical drama focuses on the sexual search for identity of its dazzling title character. The emancipation of a regent asserting herself in the midst of royal court intrigues, which was unusual for the time, suggests a comparison with Queen Elizabeth I of England. However, in comparison to Cate Blanchet's portrayal of a monarch who freezes cold by necessity, Kristina in Mika Kaurismäki's (brother of Aki Kaurismäki) film is a female figure bubbling over with life and the will to reform, who retained her exceptional status even after her death: Kristina of Sweden is one of three women buried in the Vatican Grottoes in St. Peter's Basilica. “The Girl King” offers the eye candy of an opulent costume film with a realistic look. The concise screenplay by Canadian Michel Marc Bouchard interprets the historical figure and her drama of love and identity as a primal scene of modernity, in which Kristina emancipates herself from the religious imperatives of the patriarchal Christian world view and discovers her subjectivity. [...] Unlike Greta Garbo in Rouben Mamoulian's “Queen Christine”, Kaurismäki's protagonist fights against inner demons. In a dramatic scene, she is confronted with her trauma, her mother's (Martina Gedeck) death wish. Kristina is to be persuaded to marry and reminded of her duty to give birth, but hatred explodes between the women - furiously played. [...] “The Girl King” combines speculation about conspiracies at court and the poisoned death of their guest René Descartes with the traditional facts surrounding Kristina's painful farewell to Ebba to create a dense spectacle. In the end, she remains an enigma, this gifted eccentric who, after her abdication, begins a new life in Rome, of all places, at the center of the Counter-Reformation.” (Claudia Lenssen, at: www.epd-film.de)