Writer: Suzie Miller
Director: Susanna White
It’s been a strong year for playwrights at the BFI London Film Festival with works by Martin McDonagh, Florian Zeller and James Graham all receiving headline gala screenings. Joining them is Suzie Miller whose play Prima Facie was a huge hit in the West End and on tour, the remarkable story of a woman barrister raped by a colleague. Originally a monologue, the world of the play has been expanded by Miller as the screenwriter in a film directed by Susanna White that loses some of the intimacy in its transition to the screen, although its depiction of rape and the compromised process of the law remain stark.
Tessa has clawed her way into a senior position in a respected chambers, spending her time defending rape cases and using the law to protect her clients. But a romantic night with a colleague turns to rape and Tessa is unmoored by the experience, seeing the trial process from the other side and the powerlessness she feels as the accuser.
White’s film has a strong point to make both about the failures of laws written by men that make unhelpful assumptions about memory drawn from trauma, and about the large-scale failure of the justice system in cases where he said / she said hinge on contortions of law that favour the perpetrator. And in depicting the rape itself as well as the painful aftermath, Prima Facie is sensitive to the physical and emotional experience that Tessa endures as well as the ways in which the assault spreads through the other areas of her life, shaping her career and family relationships.
Less successful is the move from a story told entirely in Tessa’s own words, giving her some agency over how her story is heard in ways that are denied in court. In expanding the dialogue to include other characters some of the immediacy is lost, people feel more like archetypes than they did in the play, and their impact is consequently lessened. The seriousness is there but less emotive and visceral as an experience than letting Tessa speak it. Prima Facie suffers from making it visual instead of a story told in words by the woman who experienced the violations of her body.
Cynthia Erivo is great in the title role, capturing the shrinking of self that Tessa speaks about in her final monologue. There is gravity in her performance and a clear recognition of the weight of the role, of what she is representing for other people and the loss of faith in the law that comes with it. But this adaptation suffers in comparison to the NT Live film of the original play – performed by Jodie Comer – where Tessa was given all the space and time to tell her own story, to help the audience understand it in words she chose. This is an important topic but in losing her voice to others in the film, Tessa is diminished by it.
Prima Facie is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2026 from 7-18 October.
