We didn't get too much Danish history at my school nor, I suspect, at most schools in England, so I came to this film more or less ignorant of the facts yet happy to accept that it was based on historical fact. At the beginning there are some stunning visuals that lull the viewer into a pleasant mood but we are soon disabused of the notion that this is yet another chocolate box potted history. After the briefest of sojourns in England we are whisked - along with Caroline, wed to a man she has yet to meet - to a Denmark where the politico/religio axis has the country in a headlock but we are smack dab in the centre of the Age of Enlightenment and things are about to change and then change again. The King - a beautifully judged performance by Mikkel Boe Folsgaard - is little more than an overgrown child with minimal interest in his bride - another fine performance by Alicia Vikander - and the catalyst in the woodpile is not the young Negro boy he treats as a pet so much as the German physician (Mads Mikkelson), a devotee of Rousseau who quickly gains the King's ear and the Queen's bed with the result that soon all three unite in a non-sexual menage a trois and push through several important reforms. It does, of course, end in tears but it also keeps us riveted for some two and a quarter hours. A fine effort.
Review of A Royal Affair
