Here’s evidence that we’re not the only country that can make heritage films. This one, from the Danish company responsible for Dogma films, is subtler than most.
It’s about an English princess (Alicia Vikander) who is married off to a mentally unstable Danish King (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard), circa 1766, and who then falls for the King’s German physician (Mads Mikkelsen).
Nikolaj Arcel’s well-upholstered film is not just a love story but a social and political treatise, with the goings-on at a rich court effectively contrasted with the poverty outside. The question is how to persuade the diffident king to force Rousseau-like liberalism on his deeply conservative subjects.
Although the film looks a trifle like a good BBC period drama, it is acted out with some panache (Folsgaard as the King justly won Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival) and the characterisation is often complex.
