Focus will begin a platform release of the Cary Fukunaga-directed Jane Eyre on March 11, 2011. The film stars Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell and Judi Dench in an adaptation of the Charlotte Bronte novel. The film just wrapped.

And in this evening’s epiosde, the beautiful and talented Tamzin Merchant’s wonderful portrayal as the doomed teenage queen Katheryn Howard came to its bloody conclusion on the headsman’s block, in a scene as gut-wrenching and heart-breaking as Anne Boleyn’s execution a couple of seasons back. Tamzin took on a daunting task with this role. Katheryn was the youngest of Henry’s queens, only fifteen by some accounts (others say slightly older), and while far from innocent, she was naive, unsophisticated, frivilous, giggly.. a kitten frolicking in a tiger cage, oblivious to the claws around her. Tamzin caught all that wonderfully, I thought… both in the character’s introduction last season, and in the first few episodes of this seasons… sexy as hell in the bedroom scenes, a playful child with her friends and ladies, awkward and ill at ease at court.

Tamzin did all that beautifully as well, showing us Kathryn’s fear and desperation, and, finally, her courage as she faced the axe. My favorite scene, though, was a completely silent one, where Tamzin dances alone in a darkened abbey while her friends and lovers are being tortured and beheaded elsewhere, and we intercut between the two. Exquisite.