By Rachael
I'd just like to say that find it incredibly distracting and yet weirdly appropriate that the producers used the triumphant-sounding music from Love Actually in the trailer for The Young Victoria, which comes out next week. (I suppose they're both romances set in England...)
The trailer is a bit of a snooze, which is unfortunate - I've always found Emily Blunt to be worth watching, and Victoria herself could be interesting post-feminist fodder, done properly. But everything here predictably nods to the young-woman-who-is-spirited-but-constrained-by-society archetype we've come to expect, down to Blunt complaining that she feels "like a chess piece," being played against her will. In reality Victoria seemed quite content to let Prince Albert take the lead in governance, despite her rejection of other conventions of the period, a contradiction and marriage I find more compelling than the narrative this film offers. The filmmakers seem to be trying to make Victoria into a Blanchett-like Elizabeth, rather than emphasizing the more modern elements of her reign - which, incidentally, is still the longest in British history.
The trailer is a bit of a snooze, which is unfortunate - I've always found Emily Blunt to be worth watching, and Victoria herself could be interesting post-feminist fodder, done properly. But everything here predictably nods to the young-woman-who-is-spirited-but-constrained-by-society archetype we've come to expect, down to Blunt complaining that she feels "like a chess piece," being played against her will. In reality Victoria seemed quite content to let Prince Albert take the lead in governance, despite her rejection of other conventions of the period, a contradiction and marriage I find more compelling than the narrative this film offers. The filmmakers seem to be trying to make Victoria into a Blanchett-like Elizabeth, rather than emphasizing the more modern elements of her reign - which, incidentally, is still the longest in British history.