‘Prima Facie’ Review: Cynthia Erivo in Misguided Adaptation

Prima Facie carries a bracing, important, timely lesson about getting justice for victims of rape. Cynthia Erivo plays Tessa Ensler, a rising star among British barristers, who often deals with assault cases, and whose world crumbles along with her belief in the legal system when she herself is assaulted by a colleague she was dating. Suzie Miller wrote the screenplay, expanding on her one-woman stage version, which won the 2023 Olivier for Best New Play, along with the Best Actress Olivier and a Tony for Jodie Comer, and its easy to see how well it might have worked in the theater with a galvanizing performance. But there is no use sugar-coating the huge disappointment the film turns out to be.

As a message, Prima Facie is still a howl of rage and a plea for change. But as a film it is a near-total muddle, from the clunky recurring voiceover to the cringey, obvious visuals and a preachy ending, with only some stunning supporting performances and a brief, powerful middle section to redeem it.

Directed by Susanna White, whose smart works include the series Generation Kill and the thriller Our Kind of Traitor, the film opens with some of its heaviest-handed imagery. As Tessa bounces up the steps of the Old Bailey courthouse, already wearing her robe and white courtroom wig, the camera focuses on her out-of-place black-sequined sneakers. She steps into a room full of sleek, posh-looking women lawyers and in the first of her voiceovers, many taken directly from the play, says, “Thoroughbreds, that’s how I see them.” The film then cuts to images of — really, it’s this literal — horses.

She goes on to say, “But I’m here too.” Although she’s a working-class girl who got through Cambridge on a scholarship, she fits in well with her colleagues. As they walk out for drinks together, she explains to a young coworker — in clumsy exposition and foreshadowing that is really for us — that legally it doesn’t matter if an assault victim didn’t consent, as long as the accused believed there was consent.

Before long she has sex in the office with another rising-star lawyer, the privileged Julian. “I want this,” her unnecessary voiceover says. Julian is played with winning charm by Daniel Ings in a role that stretches him from his usual parts, like the buffoonish screw-up brother in the series The Gentlemen. Casting is not one of this film’s problems.

A shrewd element of Miller’s story is that she sets up the rape to be as legally thorny as possible. After a terrific date and sex with Julian, Tessa feels ill from too much wine and food, and refuses when Julian wants sex again. There is no doubt that what happens next is a violation. It is also another example of how little White trusts the audience to grasp anything. The focus blurs, Julian’s expression becomes furious and we see images of shattered glass. In a director’s statement, White says she wanted the images and sound throughout to express Tessa’s inner thoughts, which seems like a fine idea on paper but lands on screen with as much of a thud as the thumping sound effects that hammer home the point during the attack. And the surreal touches, appearing sporadically, are an odd fit with the pedestrian voiceover.

After the rape, the film temporarily gains the impact it should have. Erivo walks stiffly through the first section, but here eloquently displays the pain and self-doubt Tessa is feeling when she goes to a police station to report the assault. The camera stays close on her face as she answers the officers’ questions, and for once the voiceover works effectively to tell us what she doesn’t say out loud: that she knows she was foolish to have taken a shower and washed away the evidence, that she should not have deleted a text from Julian, that she had been drinking. She has been on the other side of this kind of case, and knows she is not in a strong position to prove what happened.

But the film quickly moves on to become a courtroom drama with blurrier focus, with Tessa on the stand giving the kind of speech that is a cliché of the genre. Erivo delivers a monologue, as Tessa makes the point that expecting logic and consistency from rape victims runs counter to their experience. They know what happened, but the details can be foggy due to the trauma, she says, and the legal system ought to account for that. Despite her visceral anger, what should have been a stirring dramatic moment seems stage bound.

In opening up the film, Miller deftly brings to life characters only mentioned in the play. Noma Dumezwemi, so strong in so many supporting roles, notably in The Undoing, is moving as Tessa’s mother, a cleaning woman who has little grasp of her daughter’s world but who stands solidly by her side, even as she worries that reporting the rape will ruin her brilliant future. Toheeb Jimoh (Sam on Ted Lasso) adds to the effective picture of class difference as Tessa’s brother, whose response to learning about the rape is to try to beat up Julian. Like everyone else involved in this well-meaning dud, they deserved so much better.