RAEGINA CLEOPATRA
Type: historical docu-fiction
Director: Tina Gharavi. With Adele James, Jada Pinkett Smith, Craig Russell, Andira Crichlow. On Netflix
Seductress or strategist? Double agent or nonconformist? A story handed down for millennia, a character bordering on mythological: the biography of Queen Cleopatra is now taking shape in a Netflix docu-drama, in which historical reconstruction and fiction mix in a story that appears compelling more for the productive ambition than for the actual yield.
The docu-series produced by Jada Pinkett-Smith is making headlines especially for the choice to present a “black” Cleopatra (actress Adele James plays her)complete with explanation of correspondence with reality.
Adele James, left, with Andira Crichlow in “Queen Cleopatra” (© Netflix).
Documentary fiction, one of the many variations that the documentary genre and ancient language is taking on in the streaming era, they always have the problem of never being completely “documents” or fictionremaining suspended in the middle like entertainment products, pleasant to watch but hardly able to get to the bottom of the issues.
Queen Cleopatra is a complex and intriguing characteran example of a story made up of women “warriors, queens and mothers of nations”.
Interviews with historians (about Egypt at the time) they are the most interesting part of a story that seems more concerned with winking at the needs of the platform’s target audience than with making history and memory.
For those who love captivating stories about heroic and controversial characters from the past.
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