“Who’s Queen?” says the powerfully petulant Queen Elizabeth in Blackadder. The same question runs – less memorably and less entertainingly – through director Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots. Is it the beautiful upstart Mary, arriving on the shores of an unsteady Scotland? Or is it Elizabeth, seemingly insecure in England? Politics is played out in parallel in the dark castles of Scotland and in the oak-tabled halls of England. But amid the personalities, something’s amiss.

Young Mary Stuart returns as a widow from France with a claim not only to the throne of Scotland but with unsettling aspirations for England. Her cousin Elizabeth, immured in a stifling world of self-doubt and stiff-collared advisers, is conflicted. Is Mary an ally or an enemy? A female with fellow-feeling or a sinister sister waiting to seize the crown? As alliances become rebellions in Scotland, Mary’s own future isn’t certain. But Elizabeth knows a reckoning is coming.

And so do we, if we know a bit of history. And if we are paying attention during the snowy slo-mo at the start of the film as Mary walks calmly to her execution. Yet it’s not this foresight that robs Mary Queen of Scots of its impact. It’s that the film fails to imbue either woman with any sense of regal power. Saoirse Ronan (Ladybird, Brooklyn) brings to Mary the lively sense of a living, breathing person. Margot Robbie (I, Tonya) is beautifully brittle as the unbeautiful Elizabeth.

But Josie Rourke’s film places both women in settings of unempowered claustrophobia. Confined within their courts and castles, they appear to be at the mercy of men who may or may not have their back. Many a Shakespeare play plays out its power-games in such settings. It can work. Yet here it’s undermined by scene after scene of Mary and Elizabeth frittering away their time on favourites, fancies and foibles. Mary dances with her ladies-in-waiting, flirts with a handsome noble. Elizabeth sits alone creating paper decorations.

Mary rides out with her courtiers, the Scottish scenery lending a majestically rugged grandeur. Elizabeth is surrounded with black-clad statesmen in august, gothic-stoned rooms. But power by implication is unconvincing when neither woman does anything powerful. Ronan and Robbie are fantastic actors. But the script gives us no chance to see them as leaders, or to believe why anyone would see them as such.

Rather, Rourke’s overplayed parallel approach – repeatedly contrasting Mary and Elizabeth – emphasises the emotional and the personal not the power and the politics. Mary gives birth; Elizabeth, intercut, is seen in the same posture, fretting away with paper flowers. Sure, it spells out Elizabeth’s childlessness and the need for a successor. But the scene plays more on the psychology of the moment. In an age of female empowerment, Mary Queen of Scots misses the chance to resonate with a key issue of our time. Ironic that the score contains an unfulfilled anachronistic blast of Handel’s Zadok the Priest, without ever getting to the full-throttle climax of it.

It’s fabulously filmed though. Cinematographer John Mathieson (Gladiator, Logan) makes gorgeous use of landscapes - mountains, valleys and surf-sprayed coastlines - and lush interiors, Oxford’s Divinity School and Gloucester Cathedral doubling as courts and cloisters. Equally wonderful is the mellifluous, beautifully arch voice of Guy Pearce as William Cecil, Elizabeth’s loyal adviser: it’s a masterclass in the art - all too rare – of conveying character through voice. Plaudits too to a straggle-bearded David Tennant as the firebrand cleric John Knox, denouncing Mary with febrile ferocity.

A cracking cast and cinematography certainly make this a cinematic movie. But Ronan and Robbie, with all their immense talent, are given little enough to do. And when the inevitable – if unhistoric – meeting comes, secreted away in a remote wash-house, you know a would-be poetic conceit is not working when you want to shout: 'Move the washing away! She’s right there!' When two monarchs can’t find each other for two or three minutes in a small room festooned with linen, it’s an oddly apt metaphor for their powerlessness. And it goes on for so long you start to think, unfairly, of other scenes with washing that worked perfectly well…The Greatest Showman, Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers…

With the chameleon-like Saorise Ronan in the eponymous role, this Josie Rourke-helmed film was one I couldn’t wait to see.Mainly to learn a little more about this fascinating period in British history, since I don’t remember anything I was taught at school, except that Mary did not have a pleasant end.

The hair is magnificent.That’s the first thing that really stands out; with Mary’s scaffolded constructions, her half-brother's (James, Earl of Moray played by James McArdle) luxurious mane and David Tennant’s extremely hirsute, practically unrecognisable, John Knox.Not to mention the English Court where we have the high-forehead of Elizabeth’s chief advisor William Cecil (Guy Pearce) and of course Elizabeth herself, played by Margot Robbie not looking an inch like herself, not only due to her notable ginger (dark orange) hair but with the addition of a prosthetic nose that I found a little distracting to begin with.

Aesthetics aside, the cast is fabulous, as is the script (Beau Willimon, adapted from the book Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by John Guy) once one gets into the rhythm and flow of the Elizabethan linguistic acrobatics. Ronan, despite her youth, is already an icon in my eyes. Having most recently seen her in Lady Bird this role continues to expound the extent of her expertise. Mary epitomises the strong independent woman even as she seemingly conforms to the requirements of her birthright.I can’t think of anyone more perfect to take on such an intricate and complex role.Surrounded by a court of snakes when she arrives back in Scotland, after a childhood spent in France (Queen of France by 16 and widowed at 18), she stands her ground, ruling with compassion and wisdom beyond her years despite the constant battle against sexism and religious intolerance.

Historically, Mary and Elizabeth never met, but of course when art imitates real life, it’s okay to tweak the truth a little, for dramatic effect. Both leading actresses have discussed the singular scene where this imagined meeting takes place and it is as powerful as one would envisage such an encounter.The talent of Ronan and Robbie is aided, no doubt, by the fact that they had not previously met prior to the filming of the scene.

The film is cleverly edited in the way it juxtaposes the lives of the cousins, or ‘sisters’ as they invariably refer to each other. While there is only one scene in which they are physically occupying the same space, it feels as though they are living parallel lives; two women in a world of deceitful men.

Robbie’s Elizabeth comes across as quite weak, in this take on history. She is constantly on edge, seemingly waiting for that stab in the back that she seems to think is inevitable.Her sickness ('the Pox!') early on in the film embodies this weakness and the audience are party to her comparison of herself to Mary – she comes up wanting.Her grasp of the throne seems to be slipping and even she believes that Mary has more right to the title at one point.It is a credit to Robbie that Elizabeth doesn’t overpower the film – in her own words (during various interviews) this is not Elizabeth’s story, for once.While the Virgin Queen’s part in Mary’s life and death is crucial, this film focuses on Mary’s side of the tale.

There has been a fairly lukewarm reception to the film, critically, which I find surprising.With sweeping cinematography both kingdoms are shown in their best, beauteous, rugged light and I found many moments throughout the film to be almost set-up as though they were historic artworks, deserving of a huge gilt frame.This cannot have been accidental and is reminiscent of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon in the artistry involved in setting up such scenarios – most notably the candlelit indoor scenes.Indeed, art plays an important role in the film with the two queens swapping portraits early on: Elizabeth’s is, pointedly, much larger.

The audience I watched the film with were mercifully silent throughout, perhaps through a need to concentrate on the soap opera-like events as they unfolded, or, as in my case, through a desire to soak up every aspect of the beautifully constructed picture before me.