After months of waiting I finally got to see the Young Victoria. I have been waiting on this film since I first heard it was being made. I’ve always had a fascination with Queen Victoria. Apparently she has a reputation to most people as being a dumpy old lady with no sense of humour. That’s not how I saw her at all, she totally appealed to my romantic nature, in fact I think she may be partially responsible for my romantic nature. In school one of the first things they told us about Queen Victoria was that after her husband died she wore black for the rest of her life and had his clothes laid out every day. Could you possibly get more bottersweet romance than that? I think a mixture of that and copiuous amounts of Jane Austen have led me to where I am today. So obviously when I heard they were making a film about how Victoria and Albert met and fel in love and the first year of their marriage I couldn’t help but be utterly excited.
The film didn’t disappoint, it was magical and really the only fault I can find is that it was too short I wanted more, I was desperate for more glimpses of their lives together, them as parents, them as joint rulers! Emily Blunt was totally convincing as Victoria and by the end if you had shown me a photograph of the real Victoria I would have told you you were wrong and Victoria looked exactly like Emily Blunt. Rupert Friend was great too, I’ve been expecting to see him really take Hollywood by storm since he played Wickham in the film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, he really was the only redeeming feature in an otherwise dreadful film. His accent in this was perfect, he looked the part, he charm was subtle but noticeable as were his emotions. One of my favourite bits in the whole film was when they were walking in the garden and he was trying to pretend to like everything she liked as he’d been told but it wasn’t working so he turned around and said “Schubert, I like Schubert, I know you don’t but I do.” For some inexplicable reason that was totally romantic and perfect to me.
Miranda Richardson was perfect in the mother role as well. You really felt her pain at being isolated from her daughter and realising it was her fault for allowing herself to be falsely guided. Other shout outs for great bits of acting have to go to Paul Bettany, Harriet Walter, Mark Maloney and Jim Broadbent. But really the whole cast were wonderful!
The costumes were marvelous and made me wish I was Victorian (whereas previously I’ve always wanted to be Regency, only if I could be the daughter of a duke obviously). I loved the purple dress she wore with the flowers on it when they had a fight and he walked out on her, gorgeous!
This review seems quite short but that really is just because I have nothing bad to pick at! If you want pages and pages of gushing then I will happily oblige but it wouldn’t make for very useful reading, you had much better go and see it for yourself....well go on then what are you waiting for?
(Also I’m well aware this is the second film in a row I’ve gushed about, shocking I’ll right about one I really hated soon I promise!)