This film takes a new angle on the life of Mary Magdalene, casting her not as the fallen woman of tradition but a visionary who defied her kin to follow Jesus. It is bold and, in its way, more surprising even than Martin Scorsese’s ­characterisation in The Last Temptation of Christ, where Barbara Hershey’s Mary was both tiger-eyed temptress and, provocatively, a sweetheart of Jesus.