The Queen

Rating: 7/10 (27 March 2007)

"The Queen" is at its heart a very conventional film. From time to time I felt like it had some kind of TV-movie-feeling. That's due to the structure of the film. The characters develop, the scenes between are sprinkled with nice jokes and much of the dialogue comes across pretty unnatural. But, of course, the dialogue in the scenes that I refer to has to be unnatural, because it actually is in real life. But it all strengthens the feeling I mentioned. What is absolutely not TV-like is the acting of Helen Mirren. The strongest sequences of the movie for me were mainly those where "the Queen" was on screen alone, may it be her face in full scale, may it be her looking at the sea of flowers in front of the Palace, or may it be her trips out in the nature. And there is this absolutely stunning Diana-car-sequence, where sound, editing and images form something definitely memorable. Definitely not TV-like.