Prima Facie review and star rating: ★★★★
In London, only 3 per cent of reported rapes lead to a suspect being charged. It is a fact so shocking that even people with no interest in the courts recite it. It is the problem that forms the backdrop of Suzie Miller’s very good 2022 play of the same name as this film, which starred Killing Eve actor Jodie Comer, who in a 100 minutes of theatre astonishingly played every character from the court judge to the victim.
Miller’s writing, for which she won the Olivier Award in 2023, extracts a compelling human story out of this institutional crisis. Prima Facie follows Tessa Ensler, a successful criminal defence barrister who has become rich protecting men who are probably guilty of crimes by finding legal loopholes. But an incident in her personal life forces her to rethink the morality of her work.
Prima Facie: film can be didactic
Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo takes over from Comer for Susanna White’s screen adaptation, alongside a supporting cast (Erivo played dozens of characters was presumably harder to land on film). Still, a similar sense of horror is conjured. As Ensler, Erivo brings the sort of muscular fortitude that demonstrates how this young working class woman would graduate to this kind of job that’s typically reserved for the private schooled elite. She is also brilliant at conveying Ensler’s vulnerability; as she experiences a personal breakdown, Erivo’s angular, cocksure barrister softens, her eyes becoming wide chasms of overwhelm.
There’s an attempt to retain the character-driven intensity of the stage production, via a wealth of tracking shots of Erivo walking past London courthouses and along the river while the camera lingers close. It’s straightforwardly shot and rarely distracted by bells and whistles.
Harrowing plot
There have been complaints of didacticness, and at a few points, I am taken briefly out of the action when a line or two is too on-the-nose, moralising about the ways the legal system needs to change. But I’d argue that some of this is inevitable. The story is set in a courtroom, the literal bedrock for conversations about ways to change the world. The one place where you do get to stand up and have your say. Perhaps Prima Facie has an excuse to tell us how to feel more than most.
It’s certainly a minor distraction from a terrific depiction of the injustices so many women face, and a truly harrowing plot – multiple women ran out in tears during the London Film Festival screening, and this male critic joined them in weeping throughout. Like the West End show, this Prima Facie finds a compelling and totally shocking human story amid a legal system that seems to have forgotten about the victims.
Prima Facie is in UK cinemas on 13 November 2026