Elsinore

Meta might not be the right expression, but there is a nice synchronicity to the fact that the film selected to screen at the 70^th London Film Festival’s opening ceremony is predominantly set in the building next door: The National Theatre. The title Elsinore, refers to the castle in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the feature’s protagonist will make the Olivier Theatre his fortress.

In 1989, Daniel Day-Lewis famously walked off stage during a performance of Hamlet, because the play’s emotional connection to his own father’s passing hit too close to home. In order to complete the production’s run, Richard Eyre (Johnny Flynn) reaches out to Ian Charleson (Andrew Scott), who has just described the role of Hamlet as a pinnacle for any actor. Desperate to escape a forever-association with Chariots of Fire, Charleson jumps at the offer. There is only one thing standing in his way: his body has just started showing the first symptoms of AIDS.

Simon Stone – who just last year made The Woman in Cabin 10 for Netflix – directs the piece as a finely tuned tragicomedy, employing gallows humour and banter, while remaining sensitive to the painful history of an entire generation of queer men. Andrew Scott is quietly devastating as a creatively restless actor forced to confront his own mortality, both through illness and the existential depths of the play.

Unfortunately one never really gets used to the gaudy blue contact lenses that are not just distracting but feel like an impairment to his performance – in a hospital scene where pupil reactions are tested quite literally so. If eyes are the window to the soul, coloured contacts are a Venetian blind, obscuring a clear view. Casting an actor, whose natural eye colour differs from that of the person they are portraying is a small detail that shouldn’t mean sacrificing one of their greatest assets. If the need for physical resemblance is of such importance why not offer the part of Ian Charleson to Johnny Flynn?

But of course Andrew Scott inevitably brings his own lived experience as well as extraordinary artistic sensibility to his portrayal of Charleson, a familiarity and understanding that go beyond visual likeness. One wishes he would have been given more opportunities to explore the material’s deeper undercurrents, instead of the film trying to cover as much thematic ground as possible. Stone evidently likes his montages and cross-cutting. Sometimes the parallel edit works in favour of the emotional arc, for instance when images of theatre rehearsal are inter-spliced with Charleson’s daily visits to the clinic, culminating with him starting to run lines with one of the nurses. Other times it feels like the editing is so overly eager to encompass every narrative base that it undercuts the intimacy needed for the audience to forge a genuine connection with the Thespian.

Elsinore has a goldmine at its disposal with Olivia Colman, who plays Margaret Johnson. The pioneer in HIV/AIDS patient care doesn’t understand why Charleson would prioritise the theatre over his health. The odd pair finally come together upon her realisation that “sustaining life” has more than one meaning. However instead of actively mining the wealth of riches that comes with their interplay, her character is only a small part of his story. The project also needs to tackle ex-lovers and friends dying of the disease, a young man in the ward who needs guidance (Joe Locke), Charleson coming out to his parents and director Derek Jarman urging his former collaborator to go public with his status.

The real events at the heart of Elsinore are so profoundly moving that they retain much of their power despite the scattered direction and Andrew Scott’s force of talent elevates any material he touches. The feature’s sincere admiration for Charleson shines through but while successful as a heartfelt homage, it struggles to leave a lasting impression in its own right.

Selina Sondermann

Elsinore is released nationwide on 29^th January 2027.

Read more reviews from our London Film Festival 2026 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the London Film Festival website here.

Watch the trailer for Elsinore here: