Love rules all.
2009-03-04
$35.0M
105 min
As the only legitimate heir of England's King William, teenage Victoria gets caught up in the political machinations of her own family. Victoria's mother wants her to sign a regency order, while her Belgian uncle schemes to arrange a marriage between the future monarch and Prince Albert, the man who will become the love of her life.
Historically - as far as the cinema is concerned - Queen Victoria was born well into her seventies. Rarely has anyone tried to depict her early years and sadly, this is a rather shallow attempt so to do. Emily Blunt portrays the Queen with some fortitude but the rather soppy performances from Rupert Friend and Paul Bettany don't give us anything like a proper comprehension of the struggle she had, as a (young) woman, to establish herself at the head of an empire riddled with chauvinism, ambition and pomposity. Miranda Richardson as her mother takes up some of the slack in this lacklustre effort with the occasional, wise, contribution from Harriet Walter as the dowager Queen Adelaide welcome too. If it is a love story, then it just about works - anything else is just too far out of reach.
