Games Royals Play

Rating: 6/10 (16 May 2012)

Emily Blunt displays enough star wattage to light up an Empire, and smart editing and sumptuous production design add to the overall positives of "Young Victoria." While not a particularly engaging or stimulating movie, it manages to keep one interested.
Blunt plays the title character, a teenager about to inherit the throne of Great Britain at about the time of its world-conquering zenith, 1837. Victoria is to be a constitutional monarch, bound by the strictures of popular will. She is also bound by other forces, including the connivances of a court that doesn't always wish her well. In such straits, she needs the love and support of Albert of Belgium (Rupert Friend), a real prince who also proves a prince of a guy.
"I know what it is to live alone inside your head," he tells her, "while never giving a clue as to your real feelings."
Friend presents Albert as a likeably awkward man of real depth, a deserving match for the ravishing Blunt. Like nearly every other reviewer here, I'm in awe of what she brings to the screen, beauty and charm in equal measure. I can't say she's a great actress here, just a compelling star with her two killer expressions, Earnestly Pained and Serenely Pleased.
That's all she needs, though, in a movie that works more by way of effective montage sequences than dramatic arcs or character building. "Young Victoria" tries something I haven't seen before, where one scene ends and another begins while both alternately play out on the screen for a minute or so of seamless cross-cutting. Director Jean-Marc Vallée and his editors, Jill Bilcock and Matt Garner, make this costume drama/chick flick an easy experience for those of us outside "Young Victoria's" target demographic, keeping information on a fast boil and served up with the right amount of energy and easy flair.
This helps a lot, considering any lack of real conflict. When you think of it, there's really nothing going on in this film that isn't resolved with considerable ease.
{SPOILERS} We are told in the opening moments that Victoria is fighting an attempt by a conniving noble to seize power from her by getting her to agree to a regency, but even before the title credit we see her saying no and pretty much settling that. The nasty noble manhandles Victoria a couple of times and even kicks a dog just so we can hate him better, but winds up out of gas by the time she takes the throne. Then we get a constitutional crisis that doesn't really seem serious, especially once Albert returns to claim his queen. Albert has his own people to get free of back home in Belgium, who want to profit politically from Albert's new love, but he just ignores them and that takes care of that. {SPOILERS END}
There is little to distract from the spectacle that seems "Young Victoria's" main purpose. Given the fantastic locations where the crew was allowed to film, you'd understand a tendency to bask in long costumed sequences with "Zadok The Priest" playing overhead, but Vallée doesn't stay static. Changing up camera angles and perspectives, he keeps his camera on Blunt and lets her stares and reactions fill the screen.
Most of the time she's ravishing. Sometimes she's even interesting. One moment, offering a rill in this otherwise still mill pond, features an argument with Albert where she screams at him about defying her queenly authority, even commanding him to stay so she can scream at him some more. He declines, saying he is concerned for the health of the unborn baby she carries, and leaves her to huff alone.
Blunt in that scene asks you to not simply bathe in her beauty, but laugh at her character, succeeding well enough to make you think she has a future in movies long after her cheeks lose their rosy glow. "Young Victoria" seems mostly about those cheeks, though, and doesn't do badly by them.