This is a comedy drama written by William Shakespeare in 1590s and it is one of his most controversial plays. In 2005, BBC and Horsebridge Productions produced a tv series called Shakespeare Retold and this is one of the four plays they interpreted called The Taming of the Shrew. The film is true to the original plot, but not the text. Sally Wainwright wrote the screenplay.
It's about a very successful member of parliament, Kathreine Minola (Shirley Henderson), a 38 year old multimillionaire bad tempered woman. Her wild displays of anger and aggressive behaviour are the reason why she is still single and a virgin. She insults and degrates men around her sometimes even physicaly attacks anyone who tries to talk back to her. Despite that, her family and co-workers want her to get married, but as she is running for the leadership of her party, marriage is the last thing on her mind. Her sister, Bianca (Jamie Murray), is a complete opposite, in both looks and personality. She is a fashion model with 'renaissance' beauty, who gets marriage proposals on a daily basis, mostly from her manager Harry. Even though he is hopelessly in love with her, she turned him down every time and said "I will get married when Kathreine gets married".
But tables start turning for Kathreine when she, storming out of Bianca's party, gets stuck in the elevator with Petruchio, Harry's friend. Petruchio (Rufus Sewell) is the 16th Earl of Charlbury and a passionate eccentric who wants to marry a rich woman. The reason for that is that he didn't have a job and his father died and didn't leave him any money. He is determant to 'tame' Kate, as he likes to call her and make her fall in love with him. Eventually, she falls in love and agrees to marry him. Not long after that, Bianca gets engaged to a 19-year-old boy she met on the plane, Lucentio.
On the wedding day, for everyone's surprise, he turned up wearing a velvet cloak, a shirt, a kilt, high heel boots, net thights, makeup and black nailvanish. That made Kathreine very furious, not to mention humiliated, but she still said 'I do' and they went to Italy on their honeymoon. He was drunk, and she was raging with anger and threatened with divorce. He even invited Harry to join them and when Harry explained to Kate why Petruchio is acting the way he is, she starts to understand. Harry and her mother (Twiggy) also fall in love and get engaged. At the end Kate finds out she's pregnant with triplets and they live happily ever after.
Since Shakespeare wrote this play during the Elizabethan era, it is not a surpise that there are many similarities with not only Kathreine, but also other characters and Queen Elizabeth I. The first one, and most obvious, is the fact that everyone pressured Kathreine to get married. Even though Elizabeth had never been married, she experienced probably even more pressure than Kate, since she was the queen. They were both very powerful women and didn't need men in order to be successful. What Bianca and Elizabeth have in common are their portaits. Elizabeth controlled the way she looked in her portraits, she probably had them up in every room just like Bianca. Clothes whise, at the beginnig of the film, Kate wore a black and outfit, tight at the waist, with a collar. Her hair was in a bun. Her mother was usually dressed in luxorious fabrics such as velvet and lots of jewlery, mostly pearls and big statement necklaces. The colours she usually wore were red and purple, including makeup. Bianca loves to wear fur, and Petruchio wore a shirt that very much looked like the ones that tudor men wore. The last thing I noticed was that, Kathreine was wearing her wedding dress on the flight and for a couple of days in Italy. That was because Petruchio hid her suitcase, but it reminded me of the elizabethan era because back then, they rarely changed clothes and even slept in them, and that is exactly what Kate had to do.
Personally, I liked the film. Although, I thought her anger and bad temper were a bit too exaggerated and dramatic at the beginning, but the way she acted after her wedding was probably how any woman, including me, would react in those situations. It was funny and very entertaining.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0453555/
http://www.shakespearefilms.com/the-taming-of-the-shrew-shakespeare-retold/
http://www.lariat.org/AtTheMovies/nora/tamshrew.html
http://www.shmoop.com/taming-of-the-shrew/
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/shrew/canalysis.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/shakespeare/tamingoftheshrew/
(all information found on Nov 7th 2014)
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