Butler's Cinema Scene

Mads Mikkelsen and Alicia Vikander

“A ROYAL AFFAIR” My rating: C+ (Now at the Tivoli and the Rio)

137 minutes | MPAA rating: R

 It’s got no shortage of plush costumes and castles, not to mention an egalitarian sensibility that resonates with modern  audiences.

But I found Nikolaj Arcel’s “A Royal Affair” (Denmark’s submission to this year’s Oscar competition for foreign language film) dry and morose and not much fun.

Historically, at least, it seems to be pretty accurate.

In the mid 1700s an English princess (Alicia Vikander) is wedded to Denmark’s King Christian VII.  It is not a happy marriage for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, England seems positively liberal compared to repressive Denmark. Upon arriving in her new home, young Queen Caroline finds that much of her personal library has been seized for espousing the heretical ideas of the Enlightenment.

But that’s just a minor blip compared to the challenges posed by her husband. King Christian (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard) is flat out nuts. He drinks and whores to excess, is indifferent to his royal duties. The best education available has left him no better prepared to rule than a besotted frat boy at some Midwestern college.

Mikkel Boe Folsgaard as the philandering King Christian

Their sex life is brief and brutal. With the birth of a new prince Christian figures he need never again touch Caroline.

Poor, poor queen.

But then the King brings back to the royal palace his new best friend, a German physician named Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen…he was the villain with the seatless chair in “Casino Royale”).

Struensee is more than a good doctor…he’s a radical free thinker who uses his position in the court to subtly push the monarch toward reforming a system that leaves most of his subjects in  virtual slavery. The King even names Struensee de facto regent, setting up a fatal confrontation between this interloper and a conservative nobility.

And while he’s pulling strings behind the scenes, Struensee is pulling the corset laces of Queen Caroline, who after all has her own needs.

Sex, intrigue, political machinations…what’s not to like?

Well, for starters, how about the fact that the most interesting character here is the mad King Christian?

Vikander proves a largely colorless heroine, and Mikkelsen’s physician is singularly joyless . He’s so dour you wonder if all his attempts at social engineering are the result of genuine compassion for his fellow man or merely scientific curiosity.

Basically, everybody in this movie looks like they need a shot of Maalox. 

Moreover, the “royal affair” of the title is anemic and totally unerotic. There is absolutely no heat between Mikkelsen and Vikander…they seem to be phoning it in.

| Robert W. Butler