Almost a decade on, those high, alabaster Blanchett cheekbones are flushed with experience. She is a firm presence . . . regal, commanding, always the right measure of control no matter how great or small the occasion. Think how fitting it was that she won an Oscar playing Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. For Blanchett is our Hepburn: tough yet brittle, reserved yet needy, brilliant yet not quite the people's choice. She is all of that here, powdered white, her hair a flaming eclipse of red. There are few actresses today who, in just one look, can express a whole wash of contradicting feelings. And Blanchett, like Hepburn, is not a warm screen presence. She blows cold air on the rising thermals of melodrama. Where her fellow Australian Naomi Watts exudes warmth and emotion, Blanchett is cool intellect.

It is this chill that shivers through the sequel. When we last met Elizabeth, she announced, "I have become a virgin" (unwittingly kick-starting that craze of convenient forgetfulness, known in 20th century America, as born-again virginity). And here, she sits out her moment of triumph in a suit of polished armour, carefully moulded to Blanchett's lithe contours.

Not even Clive Owen's dashing Sir Walter Raleigh, who has the hots for the famous virgin, knows how to storm this kind of redoubt.

Elizabeth I was queen of England from 1533 to 1603, and most of the action here takes place in the 1580s, when she would have been in her 50s. Nevermind. It's best to ignore too the other name that adorned Elizabeth in her day . . .

Good Queen Bess . . . which does not lend itself to a screenplay about murderous plotting and sexual restraint. For Elizabeth: The Golden Age sticks firmly to the virgin template, tailoring the role of authority and propriety like a giant chastity belt from under which she wriggles, but never escapes.

The photography, which itself could have been titled Dutch: the Golden Age, is sumptuous. Most of the intrigue plays out in its shadows. Spain's King Philip II is hatching a plot to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots (a feverish Samantha Morton). While Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush) skulks about, sniffing out traitors to protect the queen. She ignores his request to marry for an heir, and stays chaste for the good of the country. So it simply won't do for anybody else to get any action.

"You eat and drink control, " Sir Walter tells the queen, when he means to say, "I really am getting tired of your iron knickers." And he snuggles up instead to her ladyin-waiting, Elizabeth 'Bess' Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish).

But Bess gets pregnant and must marry Sir Walter in secret, sending the queen into a jealous rage.

So, lots of emotion but the history is thinly worn. Sir Walter otherwise would have nothing to do but to reenact his famous moment of chivalry when he placed his cloak over a puddle for the queen. And the history books are burned altogether in the film's big scene, where we see the English destroy the Spanish Armada in the Thames estuary, as opposed to being dashed off Irish rocks.

I think you can forgive it that silliness. But then there's the whole issue of King Philip II, whose difficulties with Elizabeth I were primarily political. But here it looks like he is waging Islamic jihad. Elizabeth we are told, stands for freedom and enlightened thinking. While Philip's virulent Catholicism is reworked into violent religious intolerance. "God has abandoned Elizabeth, " snarls Philip, preparing to attack. Back in England, Rush's Sir Francis righteously extracts confessions with the use of some Iron Maiden . . . not lethal volumes of 1980s heavy metal which the US military used on detainees in Guantanamo, but that coffin-like device with large spikes enclosed.

Of course, they produce the same effect, and you can see where writers Michael Hirst and William Nicholson are going with this. But does Elizabeth not have her own story to tell, other than another weak 9/11 political analogy, or the idea that to rule effectively, one has to be sexually chaste? Bill Clinton never had a problem compartmentalising the two (no matter how hard the Republicans tried to prove otherwise) and I'd rather see a story in which a political leader has to forego, with great personal suffering, the cosy benefits of big business. All this is a long way off saying Elizabeth: the Golden Age is not cut of the same carat as the first film. But still, it's an enjoyable romp, even if the queen isn't getting any of it herself.