A Royal Affair Reviews

Out of some dry lines, Shakespearean allusions, and its playing with statecraft as stagecraft, this slowly emerges as more than just some ruffle-collared, frilly-cuffed throne-porn-there's a sharp quill and glinting eye behind the gilt-edged curtain.

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The performances are powerful and the set pieces are exquisite, but the conclusion will leave you feeling enormously agitated thanks to what seems like the encouragement of thickheadedness.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10

Denmark's Oscar nominee is a fact-inspired historical melodrama, but it's intriguing, elegantly shot, and well acted by the actors forming the romantic triangle.

Full Review | Original Score: B

The heady mix of power, politics, ideology, romance and corsets is a rare, royal feast.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

It's all high-drama and in the hands of director Arcel, every little knot in this detailed needlepoint is handled to period perfection.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

A sumptuous slice of period drama and real-life palace intrigue.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

...a splendid demonstration of the old adage that political films are really not about the time they are set in, but the time in which they are made.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10

The film ends not on a happy note, naturally, but on a moment of hope. Love may not conquer all, but it has a power all its own.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Although the brazen lovers, bellicose ministers and backstabbing handmaidens are familiar elements, the film is so handsomely mounted that we happily endure the ride until the turning of the screws in the tragic last act.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

Perhaps there's only so much to be done with a costume drama about illicit affairs and would-be coups.

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Gorgeously photographed if familiarly constructed, it's more or less catnip for urban foreign film aficionados and the NPR set, breathing life into period piece lust and intrigue.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

The characters in the story are interesting, even if they are not quite as interesting as the historical people on which the characters in this film are based.

Full Review | Original Score: B

In the immortal words of King Louis XVI -- or was it Mel Brooks? -- it's good to be the king.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

What a piece of work is this historical drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

Arcel directs with sympathy for all three of the main characters and doesn't make pure villains of the others.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

It is certainly competent, lovely to look at, but leaves little lasting impression.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Sometimes falling in love can really change the world or at least the fate of a nation.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

A Royal Affair covers plenty of stately ground, all in good time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

Slow moving factually based historical drama about political intrigue and sex among the royals in 18th century oppressive Denmark.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

Whenever the film truly sings, it is almost entirely due to that electricity [between Mikkelsen and Følsgaard].

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10