A Command Performance From Blanchett

Period movies inevitably reflect more about the period in which they’re made than the period of their subject, and rarely has that been more evident--or more distracting--than it is with Indian director Shekhar Kapur’s “Elizabeth.”

This Elizabeth is the Virgin Queen, the illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, a strong-willed woman who survived early conspiracies, male condescension and foreign invasion to begin a popular 44-year reign that saw 16th century England rise from the brink of collapse to a glory remembered in history as a golden age.

Virginity, illegitimacy, politics, conspiracy. How could those elements go through the filters of a storyteller working at the end of the millennium and not emerge as an allegorical blend of sex, dysfunction, feminism and melodrama?

Stubborn historians may insist that Elizabeth went to her grave a virgin, or that she at least deserves the benefit of the doubt. But this is not a golden age, or even a period of polite discretion. If we can unzip a sitting president, we can deflower a dead queen.

That’s essentially what Kapur, who showed his Hollywood ambitions with the provocative 1994 “Bandit Queen,” and screenwriter Michael Hirst (“Meeting Venus”) have done. “Elizabeth” is the story of a woman with a healthy sexual appetite who gives it up, out of pride and responsibility, and becomes the virgin mother of a new England.

When we meet her, Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) is living relatively carefree, kept under house arrest by her gravely ill Catholic half-sister, Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). Virginity is already history for Elizabeth, who is openly entertaining her lover, Lord Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes), while quietly wondering what she might someday do to restore the outcast Church of England.

Elizabeth and Robert continue their open affair after she’s installed on the throne, and after her councils have made it clear she must marry into the royal house of either Spain or France in order to save weakened England from being absorbed by one or the other.

Her potential husbands include Mary’s widower, King Philip II (George Yiasoumi) of Spain, and Duc d’Anjou (Vincent Cassel), the fey young son of Mary of Guise (Fanny Ardant), the conniving queen of France. Philip is quickly ruled out, since he refuses to even visit England, and a blind date with the French duke proves comically disastrous when, in the film’s most overdone scene, Elizabeth catches him wearing a dress, entertaining a day’s catch of young boys.

That fiasco, plus the discovery that Robert has been married all this time, turns Elizabeth’s interests to affairs of state, for which she reveals tremendous aptitude. The young queen grows into the job with strength and resolve, knowing herself to be the target of assassins, the throne to be the object of conspiracies and England itself to be prey to its enemies.

Whom does she trust, the sincere worrywart Sir William Cecil (Richard Attenborough), the devious Duke of Norfolk (Christopher Eccleston) or the darkly enigmatic Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush)? She sure can’t trust Lord Robert, who, after her rejection of him, starts taking meetings in dark corners with beady-eyed men.

Blanchett, who bears an eerie resemblance to the portraiture images of Elizabeth, is the film’s saving grace. She, alone among the principals, has a commanding grip on her character and gives her a seamless transition from naive idealist to steely monarch. Fiennes has matinee-idol looks but zero magnetism as Robert, and Rush, so sensational as David Helfgott in “Shine,” seems more lost than menacing as the Machiavellian Walsingham.

Kapur will have his Hollywood career. He’s a bit of a pack rat, ordering camera moves that would please Brian De Palma and staging a purge of conspirators as an almost direct homage to Francis Ford Coppola. But the film looks fabulous, and in the costume dramas he prefers, that’s often enough.

* MPAA rating: R for violence and sexuality. Times guidelines: There is more than a little suggestion of sexuality and sexual politics in the Elizabethan court.

‘Elizabeth’

Cate Blanchett: Elizabeth I

Joseph Fiennes: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester

Christopher Eccleston: Duke of Norfolk

Geoffrey Rush: Sir Francis Walsingham

Richard Attenborough: Sir William Cecil

Kathy Burke: Queen Mary Tudor

PolyGram Filmed Entertainment presents, in association with Channel Four Films, A Working Title production. A Film by Shekhar Kapur. A Gramercy Pictures release. Directed by Shekhar Kapur. Produced by Alison Owen, Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan. Written by Michael Hirst. Director of photography, Remi Adefarasin. Production designer, John Myhr. Costume designer, Alexandra Byrne. Editor, Jill Bilcock. Music by David Hirschfelder. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

At selected theaters.