Surprisingly Dishy Account of a Momentous Week Anchored by Mirren's Superbly Etched Portrayal

Rating: 8/10 (8 January 2007)

It's reassuring to see an actress of Helen Mirren's caliber finally receiving the top-line recognition she deserves for a role that must have been challenging to tackle without sinking into parody as others before her have. As Queen Elizabeth II, she manages to convey the immaculate decorum of her real-life counterpart without sacrificing the humanism essential in empathizing with her during a trying time. The period in question is the week that felt like an eternity after the death of Princess Diana in 1997 when the world was awaiting an official response from the Queen. With just a wig and glasses to alter her appearance, Mirren is superb in a role that must have been quite constraining given that the subject is not only still the reigning monarch but the model of blank-faced self-possession. Written by Peter Morgan and directed by Stephen Frears in a surprisingly dishy manner, the film actually plays out as a witty comedy of manners beset by a tragic event.
The 2006 film chronicles that momentous week and prefaces it with Tony Blair's first formal introduction to the Queen in May 1997 after his election as the first Labour Party Prime Minister in nearly two decades. Elizabeth's concerns over Blair's promises of modernity are expressed in small gestures, but obviously their values-based clash come to the fore when Diana is killed in a Paris car accident six months later. Cloistered at the time in their Scottish estate, Balmoral, the royal family does not support a public memorial for Diana since she had divorced Charles the previous year. However, public outcry over their seeming aloofness reaches a level of frenzy that places Blair in the difficult spot of requesting the Queen to speak to her subjects about what she considers a private matter. Exacerbating the situation is the residual animosity that the royal family feels toward Diana, whom they feel had betrayed them in the media.
While the story is fact-based, one can't help but believe the private moments are played with a certain amount of exaggerated tabloid-friendly bias, especially the frequently cutting swipes at Diana and the rather fanciful episode with the stag. It makes for some of the film's more entertaining moments, but concurrently they undermine the credibility of the account. Beyond Mirren, there is superbly comic work from James Cromwell as a blustery, unsympathetic Prince Philip; Alex Jennings as a grieving but oddly vacant and paranoid Prince Charles; Helen McCrory as Blair's curtsey-challenged, tough-minded wife Cherie; and Sylvia Syms (not the jazz singer) as the still-alert, eye-rolling Queen Mother. Initially, Michael Sheen looks like he will do a zealous parody of the real Blair, but he gains respectable gravity as the story progresses. Above all else, the film is a personal triumph for Mirren's stellar work in what may turn out to be the role of a lifetime.