Canadian Film Forum

Patricia Achim · Junior Data inscrierii: 28/Ian/2015 Mesaje: 2

The Young Victoria

Jean-Marc Vallée was born in 1963 in Montreal, Canada. He is the director of: Negru List (1995), Los Locos (1997), Loser Love (1999), C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005), The Young Victoria (2009), Café de Flore (2011), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), Wild (2014). He is also a writer, editor, actor and co-producer. He introduces a new way of filming and he uses several special effects, from fade in-fade out and focus shift to slow motion, telepathy and contrapoint music. The Young Victoria, C.R.A.Z.Y. and Café de Flore have in common the fact that they focus on discovering one's identity.
Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany, Miranda Richardson, and Jim Broadbent play the main characters in The Young Victoria. The movie received the following awards:
Oscar for Best Achievement in Costume Design;
BAFTA Film Award for Best Costume Design and also for Best Make up and Hair;
CinEuphoria for Best Costume Estetică – International Competition;
CDG Award for Excellence in Period Film;
Jupiter Award for Best International Actress (Emily Blunt);
PFCS Award for Best Costume Design;
Santa Barbara International Film Festival – Virtuoso Award (Emily Blunt);
Sudbury Cinefest – Audience Award (Jean-Marc Vallée).
(source of awards imbd)
The film presents the story of Queen Victoria, from her childhood to her first years of reign. She is presented as a child growing up in a castle, apparently living the life of a princess. But in fact she lives a life full of rules and everything is controlled by her mother, the Duchess Victoria, and her lover, Sir John Conroy. They want her to sign a Regency Act, which would give all the power to the Duchess Victoria (in fact to Sir John Conroy who controlled her) if the King died before Victoria was eighteen years old. But even when she was very ill, the young Victoria refused to sign it.
The Duchess wanted her daughter to marry her borther's son so she invites him to visit them at the castle. Albert arrives, and the two seem to get along very well and even after his departure, they still keep in touch. The young Victoria has another wooer, Lord Melbourne, a candidate for Prime Minister.
The King dies, and the young Victoria becomes the Queen Victoria. She no longer has to obey to her mother's rules and also she finally obtains the freedom she always wanted, or at least that's what she believes. Now that she has all the power, everyone tries to manipulate her, even the closest men in her life: Albert and Lord Melbourne (now the Prime Minister).
Even though she has to dedicate all of her time in order to learn how to properly rule, her heart remains with Albert and after a few years they get married. They are a happy couple, but as everyone in her life, Albert wants to have a say in what is happening and he wants to get involved, so they get into a fight. Soon after, someone tries to shoot the Queen, but Albert protects her and he ends up getting shot. This convinces the Queen Victoria that he truly loves her and that he didn't marry her because of the power.
There are some well developed themes in the movie like:
- family: the relationship between parents and children, especially between the young Victoria and the Duchess Victoria;
- loneliness: she couldn't play with other children and she couldn't visit her relatives;
- lost childhood: at the beginning of the movie, the young Victoria asks herself "What little girl does not dream of being a princess?". But she lived under the Kensington system, created by her mother and Sir John Conroy, which implied that she always had to sleep in the same room as her mother, someone had to hold her hand when she went up or down the stairs and her food was always tasted by someone else before she could eat it. And then we get our answer to the question asked before: "Some dreams are not what they seem";
- failure: everyone expected her to fail, not only because of the fact that she was young, but also because she was a woman;
- independence versus manipulation: she wanted to become the Queen so she could be independent from her mother. She got that independence, but this lead to her being manipulated by the Prime Minister, by the politicians and even by her husband;
- mirror: before having an important meeting or when having conversations with her mother, we see her reflection in the mirror and she appears to gain confidence by doing this.
Regarding the film's reviews, they were good but not outstanding: "More than anything, «The Young Victoria» deserves kudos for dispelling the common image of Queen Victoria -- that rather plump, matronly widow with the dour hankie on her head -- and presenting viewers with a beguiling young woman imbued with spirit, intelligence and observant wit. «The Young Victoria» may impart copious amounts of detail about its fascinating protagonists, but it's not a mere tutorial: It's a heady, thoroughly transporting plunge" (The Washington Post). The New York Daily News says that "The film does look beautiful, and there's enough intrigue to inspire anyone to learn more about such a complex, fascinating life. It just would have been nice to see a little more of that complexity onscreen", while Time mentions that "Lord Melbourne, the 58-year-old Prime Minister who coached Victoria in politics and queenly affairs, is played here by the dashing and quite youthful Paul Bettany, excising 20 years and at least as many pounds from Lord M.'s real person".
In my opinion, the movie portays the young Victoria as a role model for all the young women, both then and now, because she fought for what she wanted and didn't give up no matter the obstacles. Also, it presents the early life of Queen Victoria in an unexpected way, that hasn't been shown before.
We notice the use of the article the in the title. Why not just call it Young Victoria? The article the is usually used in order to indicate uniqueness, but here, I believe that they used it in order to emphasize the difference between the Victoria who refused to be what everyone expected her to be only to get what she wanted and the Victoria who ended up becoming a mother who chose a husband for each one of her daughters.
What is common to all Canadian films is the relationship between the parents and their children. And not just the relationship, but especially the conflicts that appear between two different generations. Here we have the Duchess constantly trying to control her daughter and the result is favorable to the young Victoria, who doesn't only get independence and power, but she choses to push her mother away. The differences between two generations are also well shown in Jean-Marc Vallée's movie C.R.A.Z.Y. where the father tries to understand but cannot accept the fact that his son is gay. Here, the genital orientation is seen from the perspective of the father (something that can't happen) and from the child's perspective (besides the fact that he has to accept himself as not being like the others -especially like his father- he has to deal with his father's disapproval of that fact even existing).
In the case of Café de Flore, we are shown the difficulties and the obstacles that a mother and a child have to deal with in order to have relationship as close as possible to a normal one, when the child has a mental disorder (down syndrome).
The sequence I chose is significant for the movie, because that's the ocazie in which Victoria knows who she wants to be with for the rest of her life: her cousin Albert. They are playing a chess game and she tells him that she feels just like a pawn in the game, played by everyone else. What is different about Albert is the fact that he doesn't want to rule her, he wants to rule with her.
The scene uses various camera movements: shot-reverse shot, focus shif and rough pan. The emotional effect that we get is that it makes us believe that we are right there, in the same room with the actors.

Internet sources:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0962736/awards?ref_=tt_awd
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/young-victoria-review-emily-blunt-victoria-secret-article-1.434288
http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1948663,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121701436.html