The term “history” is quite a divisive one – for some, it evokes the feeling of dull, passionless stories that do very little outside of promoting the past and how life was supposedly better or worse at any given point prior to our birth, while for others it is an exciting concept, an opportunity to unearth new secrets about the past in our perpetual effort to understand our world and how we got to this particular point. One of the more intriguing historical figures is Queen Zaphira, who lived during the 16th century and reigned as the empire’s final queen before her suicide. Her story has been turned into the appropriately titled The Last Queen (Arabic: الملكة الأخيرة), in which directors Adila Bendimerad and Damien Ounouri, the former making her directorial debut, spin a yarn about her life and everything that she represented as one of the last-known remnants of an era that is both fascinating and riveting. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the film, which is more accurately described as a chore, representing the dullest and listless style of period piece imaginable, the kind that looks beautiful but contains very little beneath the surface, which is a major flaw when it comes to a story that had the potential to be extremely captivating but instead fell victim to the same hackneyed tricks that we find often plaguing these films. This is not a very good film, and we find it succumbing to the majority of pratfalls that come with these historical dramas, where the idea is good but the execution is beyond lacking. Perhaps it needed some more time to develop, or maybe an entire reconstruction, but the main aspect that prevents The Last Queen from being a success comes in its inability to give the audience anything of value in terms of a story, which is its primary shortcoming.

We have seen many examples of an uninteresting story being turned into a riveting, captivating film that is filled with nuance, complexity and brilliance – and it, unfortunately, stands to reason that the opposite would be just as likely to occur from time to time since not every period piece can be excellent, and there has to be a few failures along the way. The Last Queen is one such film, and we can ultimately just state that this is not all that interesting of a film – the story it tells is fascinating, but the execution is not very good. Taking their cue from various non-fiction texts that cover the history of the Ottoman Empire, we can understand why this material would seem appealing at a cursory glance – there is something quite compelling that comes when reading about the lives of these people, and we become absorbed in their world, seeing the era through their eyes. This sense of intimacy and complexity is entirely lost in the film adaptation, which places a barrier between the protagonist and the audience, and all we can do is peer into her life, observing the routines of this empire, rather than having the access that we would hope to get from such a story. The film is actively trying to put a face to the historical context, but the result (as admirable as these intentions may have been), is not particularly effective, since the story is lacking in any nuance – the narrative is overly complex (it is particularly inadept at making it clear what each character intends to do throughout the story), and everything is far too ambigious, kept confined within a set-off moments that do very little to help us understand who these characters are or what they represent, which is something of a cardinal sin for such a film, which should have strove to be far more compelling than it was in reality.

Perhaps the term “style over substance” is used too liberally (and I have certainly made use of this concept on a few occasions), but there is a reason why it is viewed as something of a binary, a pairing of two broad ideas that somehow don’t mesh together well in most instances. While we have seen many films utilize both, a film like The Last Queen is almost entirely impacted by the lack of a coherent story, and instead tries to compensate with the visuals. Undeniably, this is a gorgeous film – the decision to shoot on location as much as possible does prove to be a merit of the film, and for those who enjoy period pieces simply for the production design and costumes will find that this is a worthwhile use of their time, since most of the effort goes into the construction of the visual components, rather than the narrative – it is an understandable decision (especially since the directors weren’t working from a definitive text, and essentially had to cobble together various elements of the story to make it seem logical), but not one that we really should be encouraging, especially not in an era where we have seen so many remarkable films combine both visual and narrative grandeur to create something simple, striking and captivating, none of which really applies to The Last Queen outside of a few stunning moments in which the camera catches the grandiose beauty of this period, which is still impactful but not nearly enough to compensate for some of the more troublesome aspects of this film as a whole, which falls victim to many of the more common challenges usually asserted on period stories – it just doesn’t have the artistic bandwidth to compensate for these issues, and instead surrenders to them almost immediately.

You wouldn’t be foolish to assume that the actors would at least salvage the film from being completely ineffectual, and this is true to an extent. The cast of The Last Queen is solid – the film is led by Bendimerad as the titular Queen Zephira, and she is a very gifted actor who does strong work and has been steadily rising in the industry for quite some time. However, it is difficult to look at this film as anything more than a vanity project – she was interested in the material, so it is not dismissive to say that she likely decided to make this film as a way of exploring this era, but her performance is not on the level where we can believe that it was the role she was destined to play, nor one that she was particularly passionate about. How else can we explain the fact that something is missing from so much of this character? The sense of complexity and humanity that drives this person is absent, and we are left with a very internal, quiet performance that has bursts of energy, but nothing that helps us understand who she is or what she represents. To their credit, the directors were dealing with someone about which very little was written, so there wasn’t much at their disposal in terms of storyline or character traits. Yet, it still feels underdeveloped, even with such a caveat lingering over the proceedings. There are still some very good moments in this performance, and Bendimerad is a capable lead, just not one that inspires much passion for the most part. There are good performances in the supporting cast, in particular from the always excellent Nadia Tereszkiewicz, who has immediately established herself as one of the best young actors currently working in Europe, and someone who I assume we will be seeing quite regularly going forward since she is a remarkable performer and makes for quite compelling villain in this film. Everyone does what they are asked to do, and whether or not this is enough is certainly a matter of opinion and something that everyone will respond to quite differently.

There isn’t much merit to be found anywhere in The Last Queen outside of its visual scope, but there is a constant sense that it was aiming for greatness and fell short on far too many occasions, which is an unfortunate quality, and not one that is easily rectified, since a lot of the problems occurred in the conception and early planning stages, rather than later on, when it could have been shifted to be more analogous with the better versions of such stories. Something is missing from this film, and we can never quite figure it out – it is slightly too long (and it tends to get quite repetitive), and there is a gradual sense of unease that eventually envelopes the film and makes it feel so incredibly inconsistent a lot of the time, which can become a chore to get through, especially since the story it is telling spans such a long amount of time. It has an interesting story, it just manages to disregard so much of what would make it so compelling by focusing on the most unnecessary of details, drawing our attention to the more meaningless aspects of the narrative, and ultimately just falling apart when it should have been focused on being cohesive and consistent. Not a particularly good film, and one that deserved a better approach, The Last Queen is a work that is most appropriately described as a stunningly beautiful misfire, and not much else.