Mad Love

Did Joan, the queen of Castile and heiress to the crown of Aragon, inherit the clinical insanity of her grandmother, or was she driven to desperation by forsaken love? Spanish writer-director Vicente Aranda takes the stand in his elegantly envisioned melodrama that Joan (played by Pilar López de Ayala) was a victim of her own emotions in a historical period when public display of personal feelings was unacceptable. Aranda synthesizes fragmentary documentary information from the 15th and 16th centuries with a subjective, modern interpretation of character to dissect Joan’s marriage to Flemish monarch and inveterate womanizer Philip the Handsome (Daniele Liotti). This vivid portrait of a woman consumed by lust and love and crushed by betrayal conjures up the intoxicating fumes and emotional ghosts of a fresh Rembrandt.