Prima Facie review: Cynthia Erivo excels in flawed but important adaptation of Suzie Miller play

The celebrated one-woman play Prima Facie comes to the big screen in this thought-provoking, if somewhat middling, adaptation. Since Suzie Miller’s play launched in 2019, this landmark legal drama has been nothing less than a sensation. The 2022 London production was nominated for five Laurence Olivier awards, winning best new play and best actress for star Jodie Comer, whose emotionally devastating performance also claimed her a Tony Award when the play transferred to Broadway.

Here, Wicked star Cynthia Erivo steps into the role of Tessa Ensler, a super-sharp defence barrister at Chancery Gate Chambers who specialises in sexual assault cases.

She moves among the “thoroughbreds” in the legal profession, “the best of the best”, as she intones in voiceover. A Cambridge graduate, she also comes from a working class family – her mother June (Noma Dumezweni) is a cleaner, her absent father might be doing prison time, she hints.

When it comes to taking on rape cases, “I don’t choose them, they choose me”, she shrugs, seemingly unconcerned with the emotional toll it takes on the women brave enough to step forward and bring a perpetrator to trial. Early on, we see a woman torn to shreds in court, accused of being intoxicated. “I’m just doing this to protect other women from that man,” she mutters, glancing at the fellow in the dock.

As the end credits remind us, one in three women are sexually assaulted, and only one in 10 cases are reported to the police. Of those, only one in ten are successful prosecutions. And the law is not fit for purpose, Miller argues, when it comes to dealing with cases where so often the victims are forced to defend their actions. Tessa comes to realise this is the bleakest of ways, after she and her colleague Julian (Daniel Ings) go on a date.

While Tessa confesses she is falling for him, things change when they go out for a meal, and head back to hers. They have consensual sex, but later on, she’s sick. Must be something she ate, she thinks. Feeling grotty, all Tessa wants to do is brush her teeth and go to sleep. But the drunken Julian forces himself on her. She cries “no”, more than once, but he continues.

Tessa makes her escape, heading to the police station and eventually bringing the case to trial. 1107 days later, to be precise. Directed by Susanna White (a BAFTA TV winner for her work on Bleak House), it’s here where the film picks up.

The courtroom third act is tense and taut, a battle of wits, as Tessa’s interior monologue guides her through the experience, all too aware of the traps that Julian’s defence barrister, Thomas Buckley (Elliot Levey) is laying down.

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Adapted by Miller from her own work, the real issue with Prima Facie, the movie, is how is struggles to take Tessa’s unbroken monologue from the play and turn it into a three-dimensional drama, with other characters and London locations.

Early scenes feel very corny, as Tessa is bopping around to high-energy pop music like Labyrinth’s Let The Sun Shine and she and Julian pop into a deli to buy some luxury ice cream, only to consume it (spoons dropping on the floor) in what feels like an advert for Häagen-Dazs.

Erivo is a highly competent actress and handles the emotional scenes with real skill, but even she can’t save the inauthentic dialogue in the first act, when she and her colleagues are out dancing and drinking.

It’s a shame, because if more care had been spent on these scenes, the impact of the finale would’ve surely been greater. But it’s still a film that makes hugely important points about the difficulties of sexual assault cases, and the courage it takes to seek justice.

Prima Facie is will be released in cinemas on 13 November 2026.

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