The Lost King, review: Sally Hawkins and Steve Coogan go digging for Richard III – with mixed results

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has again made plain just how closely monarchy entwines with national identity – on a grand scale, but more privately too. Who we are as a country was defined in no small part by who she was; how we thought of ourselves as citizens at least partly reflected the qualities and values we saw embodied by our head of state. This flawed but compelling new feature from Stephen Frears – conceived, of course, a very long time before such things became topical – is a timely venture into this intriguing terrain. It had its world premiere at Toronto this weekend and will open in British cinemas next month.

The Lost King reunites director Frears with the writers of 2013’s Philomena, Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, and retells the true story of the discovery in 2012 of the remains of Richard III beneath a Leicester car park. The discovery itself was a world news event. But the trail of events that led to it, not to mention the woman who blazed it, are far less well known – and Frears, Coogan and Pope have set out to redress the balance.

The opening credits play out over a murky Middle Ages map and an appetite-whetting overture by Alexandre Desplat, written in the swirling film-noir style of his wonderful score for Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer. But what follows is less an archeologically themed mystery thriller in the Dan Brown vein than something more introspective and low-key: a search-for-justice procedural, with trowels.

Sally Hawkins stars as Philippa Langley, a separated mother of two teenage boys who becomes intrigued by the Richard III story almost by chance. While taking time off from work due to chronic fatigue, she takes her sons to a production of the Shakespeare play that was so instrumental in canonising the king as the nepoticidal hunchback: seeing her own struggles reflected in his, though, she’s struck by a desire to redeem this monstrous figure, and digs into the historical record with growing obsessiveness.

Due to her ME and age, Philippa has been passed over for promotion at her telesales day job – so her investigation becomes a double-sided attempt to find rightful places in the great order of things for herself and this unlikely kindred spirit. Richard himself is played by Harry Lloyd, both in the theatre production that captures Philippa’s imagination and as a largely silent ghostly sidekick.

This hallucinatory gimmick feels a few rewrites away from working smoothly, and the thematic linking of Philippa’s plight with that of her subject’s never quite convinces. But Hawkins is quietly impressive as this prickly but resolute soul, and Coogan creates a nice role for himself as her encouraging ex-husband John, who eventually gets to deliver the immortal line: “Boys, your mum’s found Richard III.” There are also (fictional) clashes with patronising, glory-hunting academics – perhaps unfairly, the University of Leicester doesn’t come out especially well – but this add some welcome salt to the tale: as settings go, higher-education seminar rooms and an overcast Leicester car park need all the extra savour they can get. The past week may have conferred a weight and significance on this watchable middlebrow drama that it was never designed to bear. But as the film itself knows, history is far from reasonable.

12A cert, 108 mins. Playing at the Toronto Film Festival. In UK cinemas from Friday 7th October