En kongelig affære

Nikolaj Arcel (2012)

There was a point, about thirty minutes in, at which I thought A Royal Affair was set to become a fascinating film.  Johann Struensee, a provincial doctor in Germany and a freethinker, has been appointed the personal physician of the mentally unstable king of Denmark, Christian VII (1749-1808).  Struensee has won Christian’s trust through his ability to swap quotes from Shakespeare plays at his job interview with the monarch and subsequently by indulging his master’s eccentricities.  Those eccentricities include:  addressing his young wife Caroline Mathilde, an English princess who left her family in Britain to marry Christian, as ‘mother’ (Christian’s own mother is dead but he has a balefully controlling stepmother); lavishing much more attention on his hound Gourmand than on Caroline or any other member of his court or family; and giggling irrelevantly.  When Struensee joins the Danish court Caroline is initially suspicious and, given Christian’s affinity with the doctor, a little envious.  But she’s attracted to Struensee both physically and, once she’s seen his library, intellectually.  (Caroline has good reason to covet the library, which includes the works of Rousseau and Voltaire:  many of her own books are confiscated by the Danish censor on her arrival in the country.)  Struensee teaches her to ride a horse – properly mounted rather than sidesaddle – and Caroline is exhilarated.  The sexual undertow of the experience is unmissable but the couple, as they and their mounts return from their exertions at a sedate trot, talk about philosophy.  You wonder just how the themes of forbidden sexual and intellectual liaison between Caroline and Struensee are going to develop, and how Christian, increasingly dependent on Struensee, will react to this dual betrayal.

The answer is conventionally and – because hopes were raised of something more original – disappointingly.  A Royal Affair is well made and acted; the storytelling is clear and the story being told is involving.  Yet it turns into a familiar historical melodrama and something of an illustrated history lesson:  the closing legends on the screen confirm Johann Struensee’s liberalising legacy to Denmark.  He wields extraordinary power; his influence over the infantile king is such that the doctor comes close to ruling the country, and thereby thwarting the repressive agendas of the political and religious establishments of the day.  Struensee promotes freedom of thought and freedom of speech:  it’s thanks to him that censorship is abolished (although it then has to be reinstated to protect his own interests).   Mads Mikkelsen is excellent as Struensee for as long as the doctor is insinuating himself and, in doing so, keeping much of himself hidden from view – as Caroline, intrigued but frustrated, points out in a snatched conversation with him at the margins of a masked ball.  Mikkelsen isn’t quite so persuasive once Struensee takes centre stage.  He doesn’t suggest a mania for reform:  this aspect of Struensee is further diminished because the director Nikolaj Arcel, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rasmus Heisterberg, tends to focus more on the love affair between Struensee and Caroline than on their political partnership.  Alicia Vikander is impressive as Caroline:  this remote, usually unsmiling young woman isn’t particularly likeable but Vikander very successfully suggests a personality being formed by experience and which grows more wary as she gains greater understanding.  Mikkel Folsgaard’s cuckoo king seems at first a familar screen interpretation of madness.   As you realise the extent to which Christian, though lacking in self-control, is self-aware, Folsgaard’s characterisation becomes more interesting.  (The king’s love of play acting is thoroughgoing; he loves both to watch theatre and to turn his own life into a performance.)  With Trine Dyrholm as the wicked stepmother, David Dencik as the Danish prime minister, and Harriet Walter in the small part of Caroline’s mother.  The fine photography – which suggests pictures at an exhibition but also the reality of damp, greenish-grey landscapes – is by Rasmus Videbaek.

13 January 2013