There’s a lot going on in Stephen Frears’ dramatized retelling of the story behind the discovery of King Richard III’s grave beneath a parking lot in Leicester, UK, in 2012. There’s the attempt to revise the accepted historical record surrounding Richard from that of a usurper to that of a responsible monarch. There’s a study of the misunderstood affliction known as chronic fatigue syndrome, which affects Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins), the woman who locates the grave. And there’s a fascinating but rather dry exposition of how such archaeological projects are funded and carried out. Frears and his screenwriters, Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, try to bring all these elements together in an entertaining way, and succeed only up to a point.

Early in the movie, Philippa takes a leave of absence from her public relations job after a promotion that should go to her instead goes to a younger colleague. In any event, her illness makes a daily grind difficult and she’s grown frustrated by the job anyway. With nothing to do she attends a performance of Richard III and, intrigued by the controversy over the conventional biography outlined in the play, plunges into research that leads her to a group of literary revisionists who meet regularly in a pub to discuss how to prove that Richard was a legitimate monarch who did not, in fact, murder his nephews—a version of his story rendered canon by the Tudors and, later, Shakespeare. Sympathizing with Richard because his own illness, like hers, was vastly misinterpreted, Philippa sees the revisionists’ point but disagrees with their methods of going about their task. While entertaining visions of Richard (Harry Lloyd), who endeavors to tell her what he’s really like, Philippa throws herself into the search for his actual grave so as to prove once and for all that he wasn’t a hunchback madman. 

A good portion of the movie is given over to bureaucratic and academic hurdles that Philippa is forced to overcome with almost superhuman rectitude and patience, and while I usually enjoy this kind of wonky development, there isn’t enough dramatic substance to create sufficient tension. Though Coogan is on hand as the ex-husband who supports Philippa’s project unconditionally and adds his own characteristically wry humor to the mix, he can’t lift the movie out of its rut of middle-brow respectability. In the end, there’s not enough action to justify a narrative movie rather than a documentary, which likely would have achieved the same satisfying payoff that The Lost King does but with more excitement along the way. 

Opens Sept. 22 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Lost King home page in Japanese

photo (c) Pathe Productions Limited and British Broadcasting Corporation 2022