Royal offensive

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  Deborah Ross

  Royal offensive

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Alexander Larman

What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?

So, anyway, Julian Fellowes was commissioned to write the script (who else, my dears, who else?), then the director Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y.) came on board, and, now, here it is, starring not just Ms Blunt but also a good sampling of the usual suspects when it comes to this kind of thing: Miranda Richardson, Harriet Walter, Jim Broadbent and Mark Strong but not Dame Judi Dench who, presumably, saw the Duchess of York coming and pretended to be out. ‘Tell her I’ve gone to Asda!’ No offence, but you would, wouldn’t you? And it was a good call. Dame Judi didn’t miss out on much.

Look, this is a well-groomed film, and an earnest film, full of the things you will like if you like this kind of film — you know, sumptuous frocks and sumptuous palaces, all topped off with fat dollops of political intrigue — but it somehow fails to convey any real tension. It’s lovely to look at, but also peculiarly inert and leaden. Seriously, I can remember episodes of The House of Eliott that were more exciting.

It’s a pity because, as it goes, the idea isn’t a bad idea. Victoria wasn’t always that battle-axe in black with the jowls of Timothy Spall, so what was she like as a young woman? Well, the film opens in 1836, when she is 17 and is being kept a virtual prisoner by her mother, the Duchess of Kent (Richardson), and her mother’s bullying, ambitious adviser, Sir John Conway (Strong), and concludes in 1840, when she has ascended the throne and has married Prince Albert (Rupert Friend) of ‘Albert Hall’ fame and, of course, Albert Square.

There is some fascinating information in here. Did you know, for example, that, until she became queen, Victoria had to sleep on a little cot next to her mother’s bed? Or that she could not walk up or downstairs without an adult to hold her hand? Also — and I had no idea about this, but read it in the press notes — did you know that Queen Victoria is the great-great grandmother not just of our Queen, but also her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh? Heavens, they should enter Crufts.

The trouble is, while all this is interesting, it isn’t dramatically interesting, or at least isn’t here. Ms Blunt is excellent — foxy yet steely, plus gives great lip tremble — but she isn’t enough. Mostly, the problem is with the Victoria/Albert love story. It was a great love, but the courtship was humdrum, and there is just no getting around it. Even an entirely invented incident, whereby Albert takes a bullet — quite literally — for his wife, can’t get round it. Actually, that incident made me really quite cross. Surely the deal with biopics has to be this: dramatise around the facts all you like, but the facts must be the facts, otherwise how will any of us know where we are? And why should we care?

So a polished and polite film but, perhaps, one to half-doze through when it eventually comes on the telly. Would I tell the Duchess of York this? I would. I would say all this and then add, ‘And now, out of my Winnebago. Out!’ It doesn’t pay to encourage her, by all accounts.