Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 108 minutes
Release Date: October 7th, 2022 (UK) / March 24th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Pathe UK / IFC Films
Director(s): Stephen Frears
Writer(s): Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope / Philippa Langley & Michael Jones (book The King’s Grave: The Search for Richard III)

It doesn’t ring true to me.

Adapted by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope from the subject’s own book The Search for Richard III, Stephen Frears’ The Lost King tells how Philippa Langley’s (Sally Hawkins) oft-disregarded mother-of-two suffering from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) went on an adventure to find Richard III’s remains.

Inspired by the Shakespeare play and personal experience enduring demonization for a disability, she becomes infatuated with the idea of clearing the so-called usurper’s name from the slander his predecessor canonized. As a non-scholar devoid of allegiances beyond to Richard himself, Philippa merges academic findings of multiple sources to parse fact from fiction. Unfortunately, no one cares what an amateur “fan” has to say. The person who discovers his burial plot, though? That’s someone you cannot ignore.

Except, of course, that institutions with power ignore whomever they want. Despite the better story being that Philippa defied all odds to do what no one could for five hundred years, it’s difficult to cut through the noise of a university that was lukewarm to her pitch suddenly taking full credit for the endeavor.

There’s surely more to that fight than the third act of the film provides (choosing instead to simply paint the school’s face, Lee Ingleby, as a villain while Philippa ensures Richard stays her focus), but credit was never the point. This is about finding purpose and proving to herself that she isn’t the labels being thrust upon her. It’s about following her gut and feelings and seeing that history is never without bias or institutions without propaganda. Philippa seeks only to set the record straight.

It’s a journey of magical realism with Richard III (Harry Lloyd, the actor from the aforementioned play grafted into her subconscious) as her guide—a choice that creates space to question Philippa’s sanity even if only for a laugh. The device is cutely endearing if unnecessary in such a literal form.

A lot of what transpires feels similarly half-baked whether her work friends (pawns to the metaphor of the establishment sullying her name like England did Richard’s) or her ex-husband (Coogan’s John being a genuine prick until suddenly he’s not). It’s the sort of narrative conveniences that were missing in Frears and Coogan’s previous collaboration Philomena. The feel-good sensibility remains, it’s just a bit messier in its hope to endear Philippa’s story to a wider audience. Thankfully Hawkins is too good to care much.

I was invested in her mission and the reasons she would be fed up with the life dictated for her as a forty-something woman with chronic fatigue who’s always being looked over. You want her to succeed regardless of the mission itself (beyond its historical value) because she really is doing it with a grassroots impulse steeped in determination and genuine kindness.

Does any of this happen if Philippa doesn’t bring Richard Buckley (Mark Addy) a cake? Maybe not. Passion is huge. It’s what we assume turns John around to help rather than mock. It’s what gets the chair of the local funding committee (Amanda Abbington) to go out of her way to pull strings. And it gets her to quit her job and follow a dream—even if the process on-screen is reductively built from the truth for maximum sentimentality.

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Sally Hawkins as “Philippa Langley” and Steve Coogan as “John Langley” in Stephen Frears’ THE LOST KING. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release.