Pope Joan

As every moviegoer knows, the more outrageous a screenplay is the more likely it is to be based on historical data. Who could ever have dreamed up the idea of a 9th-Century woman cross-dressing in order to practise medicine, become Pope Joan (855-858) and die during childbirth?

The English-speaking 2009 German film has not attracted a single review from Rotten Tomatoes critics, and is not yet released in the USA. It's no worse than another recent bioepic about a high-placed woman (Agora), which starred Rachel Weisz, but Pope Joan was played by a German actress, Johanna Wokalek, known only in Europe (most recently for The Baader Meinhof Complex).

However, it did have John Goodman, happily hamming it up as Joan's predecessor and mentor, Pope Sergius. Portrayed as a cheerfully down-to-earth and divine character, he thought his medical miracle worker was "Johannes Anglicus", a child of a rigidly righteous English missionary (Iain Glen) saving pagan souls and disparaging women's rights in ninth-century Saxony.

When her older brother died, precocious quick-learning Joan took her younger brother's place at a Catholic school, and was boarded with a nobleman who became her lover (David Wenham). Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Empire was in turmoil, Joan almost died during a battle, and decided to bind up her breasts and find better safety as a male monk.

The whole semi-mythical tale (which the RC church does not endorse) was novelised by an American non-fiction writer, Donna Woolfolk Cross, in 1996. Soon after, German director Volker (Tin Drum) Schlondorff tried to set up a film project for it. It would have starred Franka Potente, a better-known actress outside Germany (for Run Lola Run and the Bourne trilogy), but the producers dropped Schlondorff and brought in Sonke Wortmann, a director with many awards in his native Germany (many for The Miracle in Bern, 2003), another little-known on the international scene.

He turned in a handsome sequence of medieval set-pieces with eye-catching costumes and battle scenes, but they can only be viewed as tableaux for a scarcely credible tale of an unconvincing transvestite. This Joan's body movements, demeanour and physique give away her game too often, undermining a viewer's willingness to suspend disbelief.