Mar. 13, 2013 - Issue #908: In Your Face
A Royal Affair
Revealing royalty
From multiplex-masterpiece-theatre-piffle (The Queen) to royal-guy-overcomes-psychological-impediment-to-rally-the-nation (The King's Speech), there's been a renaissance in monarchy flicks. And A Royal Affair isn't the first to tell of a supposedly mad king (see 1994's The Madness of King George) or even this particular mad Danish king (see 1935's The Dictator). But what Nikolaj Arcel's film does is dance palace-drama into the waiting arms of royal-farce—and the odd couple hits it off pretty well.
The story's crowned couple is King Christian VII (Mikkel Følsgaard) and his pre-arranged bride, British royal Caroline Matilda (Alicia Vikander). Arriving in Copenhagen in 1768, Caroline (a cousin of King George) finds her husband tetchy, theatrical and childish, when not treating her rudely or roughly and whoring around. When nobles are bowing to the king in a brothel as he's boinking a prostitute, or he demands, after returning from abroad, "I want to be greeted by my people—get them!," any gold leaf of the monarchy's half-amusingly stripped away to reveal a closed-off court that's infantilized its leader. (The sumptuous shots—taken in the Czech Republic—only add to this sense of a fairy-tale, self-contained, snowglobe world.) But when Johann Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), the new court physician, arrives, he sees the King's oddness as escapism, not lunacy, and encourages the theatre-loving ruler to act the part of policy-maker.
When Caroline realizes her main function is producing heirs or the inoculating Dr Struensee declares of his success in inoculating against smallpox, "God has nothing to do with this," A Royal Affair, though set during the Enlightenment, betrays a too-modern sensibility. The film's approach—suggesting the monarchy's a playhouse-charade trapping the royal leads in their pre-assigned roles—is more daring and intriguing than its slick-but-prosaic portrayal of politics or palace plotting. (Although, even in this cool, slightly skeptical approach to kingdom, it seems more 21st- than 18th-century.) Out of some deliciously dry lines, Shakespearean allusions and its playing with statecraft as stagecraft, A Royal Affair slowly emerges as more than just some ruffle-collared, frilly-cuffed throne-porn—there's a sharp quill and glinting eye behind the gilt-edged curtain.
Metro Cinema at the Garneau vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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