THERE is an interesting take on European history happening onscreen and this is the story of Empress Elisabeth of Austria and her love affair and adventure with Franz Joseph of Austria. Bearing the title The Empress (its German title is Die Kaiserin), the tale is a push-and-pull between the grand and the intimate, with the depiction of the empire startling us with how miniscule sometimes the historical antecedents involving these grand personalities that once ruled the narratives of power and conquest in that part of the world.
The tale begins with a very young girl, an impulsive Sisi-the Bavarian Duchess, Elisabeth von Wittellsbach. She is pictured as tomboyish, a lover of horses, in contrast to her sister, the Duchess Helene, who is not only being groomed as the next Empress but is much willing to go through the challenge of being introduced to Franz Joseph of Austria.
As fate would have it, the young Sisi who much prefers to be addressed as Elisabeth sees Franz and is smitten and falls in love with the young man. Franz at this point has taken over the empire.
Ludovika travels with Helene and Elisabeth to Austria for the engagement. That day also happens to be the birthday of Franz and it is during this moment that he will announce his engagement with Helene. Without the knowledge of both their mother and Helene, Sisi and Franz have, more or less, found themselves liking each other. Indeed, during the birthday celebration, Franz announces who he will marry and it is Elisabeth, not Helene.
The wonder of it all is that there is no remorse on the part of Elisabeth; for the family of Elisabeth also, the complication did not last long-it just felt natural that, if the other daughter is not marrying the emperor, then the other one, if she is willing, can always be the empress.
What follows then is how Elisabeth tries to negotiate the court-its affairs and complexities. Along the way, characters like Johann Strauss, the great composer, make an appearance and in the soiree-which is more like a stag party before the wedding-even the mighty Franz Liszt regales the bacchanalia with his piano-playing.
I still have to complete viewing this spectacle of a drama. Handsomely photographed, The Empress is the kind of film that suffuses the screen with the splendor that we associate with desire and conquest. Emotions seem to run high and hot among these characters. Outside of Franz, the emperor, there is his brother Maximilian who, while wholly trusted by the brother, appears to teeter on the edge always of infidelity.
Empress Elisabeth herself is both a tough and a delicate character. Around her, there is the mother-in-law and other ladies-in-waiting who are, I am afraid, merely waiting for their chance to trick the young empress or, at least, expose her own frailties.
At certain points of the film, one gets this notion that only Elisabeth and Franz are the real human characters in this caper; the rest are cardboard characters straight out of illustrated comic magazines.
The Empress is created by Katharina Eyssen; it is written by Katharina Eyssen, Bernd Lange, and Janna Maria Nandzik. It is directed by Katrin Gebbe and Florian Cossen.
Devrin Lingnau, a German actress of Turkish descent, plays Elisabeth; Philip Froissant is Franz of Austria.
Which brings me to another film-Wayward. It is a strange story about young people, which while on the surface it feels like it is reaching out to them, in the end it manages to alienate the very depiction of the said population.
The film centers on two good friends-one a dyslexic and another, for lack of a newer term, a juvenile delinquent. Abbie belongs to a rather comfortable family but a father who demands a lot from her; Leila finds comfort in being with Abbie. In Abbie’s home, Leila is sent away by her friend’s father who does not hide his discomfort about this friend’s wayward habits.
Many things are happening in this film. For one, the film opens with a runaway, a boy who escapes from what would turn out to be the very institution that Abbie’s parents would later bring their daughter to. As this daring escape was taking place, a couple was moving into a countryside home. As this couple is gradually introduced to us, we realized that the ‘man’ of the house is a transgender – a transman. It looks like they are moving back to the hometown of the wife-we describe her as, pardon the term, a real woman-to lead a ‘normal’ life, to start anew. Later in the scene, Leila herself would bring up the modifier ‘queer’ to address Alex, the husband of the young, pregnant woman.
In the town, Alex notices an odd behaviour in many of the residents of the town. One day, upon returning from running an errand for his wife, Alex finds Evelyn, the head of the Tall Pines Academy, an institution that keeps troubled young men and women, in their home.
Leila would soon find Abbie in Tall Pines and with the help of Alex, they would try to uncover the dark secrets of the town.
Mae Martin who plays the transgender policeman, created the series, which made Wayward a gripping if not messy mystery thriller about abandonment, isolation and identity.
Toni Colette’s performance in the film is a tour de force, even if in most part she was stealing the scene from what would have been quiet depictions of events. Her character has been described as committed. The two young actors are a find: Alyvia Alyn Lind as Leila and Sydney Topfliffe as Abbie.