Dir. Jean Marc Vallée , UK/US, 2009, 105 mins
Cast: Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany
Review by Carol Allen
This is a well-made costume drama dealing with the young Victoria's accession to the English throne, the early years of her reign and her relationship with the love of her life, the German prince Albert of Saxe Coburg, who became her husband and consort.
It's an very good-looking film with attractive costumes and locations and is an entertaining piece of recreated history. Blunt is pretty and spirited in the lead and Friend is very engaging and handsome as Albert, with just the right level of German accent and attitude. It also has a very good supporting cast including veterans such as Jim Broadbent as the elderly and now doddery King William IV, whose throne Victoria inherits and Harriet Walter as Adelaide, later the dowager Queen, who dishes out sensible advice to the young monarch. There are also strong performances from Miranda Richardson as the young Princess Victoria's over-protective mother, the Duchess of Kent, who keeps her daughter under virtual house arrest and Mark Strong as the Duchess's dominating advisor, who has the mother in his pocket and tries to browbeat Victoria into agreeing to appointing the Duchess as regent, so he can effectively rule England through her. Once she becomes queen, Victoria proves to be a spirited and often headstrong young woman with an unwise tendency, once she's got the crown on her head and broken free of her mother, to place all her eggs in one basket trust wise in the person of Lord Melbourne, her charming and rather sexy prime minister (Bettany).
The heart of the story though is her initially tentative romance with her cousin Albert, who is under pressure from his uncle King Leopold of Belgium (Thomas Krestschmann) to capture the heart of the young queen and thereby consolidate Leopold's influence over the English throne. While his initial courtship is at the behest of his uncle, Albert is genuinely attracted to Victoria and captures her heart by refusing to be bullied into rushing things. The scenes between them have a sweet and touching quality, even when things go somewhat awry in their marital paradise, as Albert struggles to find a role for himself.
While Julian Fellowes's script touches on the politics of the time, he doesn't go into them in any great detail, which is perhaps a wise decision, as it might have bogged down the entertainment value of the film. There are times though when the lack of political detail is a bit confusing, as in the way it skims over the circumstances, which made Victoria heir to the throne (uncles with no legitimate heirs), while later on, when Robert Peel (nice cameo from Michael Maloney) takes over as prime minister from Melbourne much to Victoria's disapproval, it's not clear that there's been an election and change of government. If you're not familiar with the history of the period, you might well think he's just taken over as party leader from Melbourne and wonder what the subsequent fuss is about. More importantly, despite the filmmakers' efforts to present Victoria as analogous with a fun-loving young woman of today, who just happens to be living in a different period, there is a certain superficiality about its approach and a lack of social comment and insight into the times and the characters, which makes the film seem a little old fashioned. Whereas Elizabeth, another film about a young queen, was rich in intrigue and skulduggery; Mrs Brown had the poignancy of love and reawakening in later life and The Queen gave us an interesting albeit speculative insight into the mind of our present monarch, this film doesn't have a lot of meat to it. It's closer to being a piece of highly polished and well-produced soap opera. But there's nothing wrong with being just entertaining, which this is.
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