Red Joan

A female KGB oper­a­tive at the heart of the USSR’s nuclear weapons devel­op­ment pro­gramme, and yet still ​“not not a pret­ty face” as Trevor Nunn’s Red Joan makes clear, Meli­ta Nor­wood lived a remark­able life. Fic­tion­alised as Joan Stan­ley or ​‘Red Joan’ orig­i­nal­ly by nov­el­ist Jen­nie Rooney, her sto­ry has been smoth­ered by cups and saucers, received pro­nun­ci­a­tion, and no dar­ing espi­onage thrills what­so­ev­er, in a rou­tine, staid film adaptation.

Sophie Cook­son plays the young, deca­dent­ly-cos­tumed Joan, a physics stu­dent at Cam­bridge at the out­break of the Sec­ond World War. Falling into the university’s young Com­mu­nist crowd, and falling in love with lead­ing mem­ber Leo Galich (Tom Hugh­es), Joan flits between sym­pa­thy and sus­pi­cion of the Stal­in­ist régime. A grad­u­ate job as an assis­tant to a clas­si­fied research team gives her access to a wealth of secrets, just as nuclear arms progress across the world races forwards.

Decades lat­er, Joan (now played by Judi Dench) is arrest­ed in her front porch and tak­en in for ques­tion­ing over her stu­dent days. Through a series of flash­backs, the film details her bur­geon­ing polit­i­cal activ­i­ty and sub­se­quent leak­ing of infor­ma­tion to Sovi­et sources, includ­ing Britain’s plans for the atom bomb.

An excit­ing premise in many ways, but every­thing about the film feels limp. Roman­tic sto­ry­lines are at the heart of the action despite the unde­ni­ably seri­ous and bold work Joan involves her­self in, and even these are frus­trat­ing­ly pas­sion­less. The film does make an effort at least to ensure ensure clar­i­ty over Joan’s rea­son­ing for sup­ply­ing the Rus­sians with such British intel­li­gence. Her anger and shame over the bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki and her desire for a lev­el world play­ing field with nuclear weapons are her moti­va­tors, not Leo’s seduc­tive pow­er or her naivety. Still, this is the only glimpse into Joan’s actu­al per­son­al­i­ty on offer.

Chop­py struc­tur­ing makes it dif­fi­cult to engage with Joan as a young woman as we skim through the nar­ra­tive of her bold youth, being told what is about to hap­pen before we are shown. Dench deliv­ers some fine speech­es in defence of her character’s younger days, but her role is exceed­ing­ly lim­it­ed. Is there real­ly any need for the film to pull us out of 1940s Cam­bridge so often and so repet­i­tive­ly, back to the same bland inter­ro­ga­tion room or cosy inte­ri­ors of grand­ma Joan’s house?

The dual time­line fails the strik­ing source mate­r­i­al and the lazy romance leaves no room for a deep delve into Joan’s char­ac­ter with­out the men who orbit her life. What might a young female direc­tor have done with such a sto­ry, god for­bid we should ask.