Mary Queen of Scots and her cousin and great rival, Elizabeth I, never met – a fact various film-makers have blithely ignored. This time Saiorse Ronan's Mary and Margot Robbie's Elizabeth circle one another amid the sheets as Elizabeth coyly tries to evade showing her face, with its scars from the smallpox that nearly killed her. The action begins with Mary's arrival in Scotland from France, where she has spent most of her life, and it gives her a fictitious Scottish accent that she uses in her efforts to win over the locals. The film takes a feminist tilt at Mary's bid to secure her status as Elizabeth's heir to the English throne should she die without children. The prevailing mood is gloomy, and the script is turgid and disjointed with a couple of yawning gaps. Clearly, it's the made-up meeting between the two queens that won Robbie a nomination in the Screen Actors' Guild Awards. She almost makes you believe that it could have happened. Almost but not quite.