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63For all its incident, A Royal Affair is slow and picturesquely framed – more of a languorously animated coffee-table book than a gripping drama.
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75A Royal Affair...is a lovely history lesson, but a film without the spark of invention that makes this modern parable feel modern.
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88Although 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.
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75It digs deep into the heart and soul of its lovers, who are idealistic, intelligent and passionate - and yet still risk everything they might gain for stolen moments together.
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88Writers Rasmus Heisterberg and Nicolaj Arcel are known in America for the original version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." This film is the exact opposite: stately instead of propulsive, emotionally warm instead of chilly, lit by candles and sun instead of flashlights and neon.
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67It is certainly competent, lovely to look at, but leaves little lasting impression.
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88Takes a fascinating chapter in Danish history, little-known to general audiences, and presents it engagingly.
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75A Royal Affair is tosh but it's ripely entertaining tosh, with emotions as flamboyant as the window treatments. There is nothing like a Dane.
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75But even appreciated simply as a little-known chapter of European history, it proves consistently engrossing, edifying and affecting.
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88Historical drama of the highest order - teeming with big ideas, and anchored by the nicely nuanced performances of Vikander and Mikkelsen.
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80Set in 18th-century Denmark, it's an intellectual costume drama. It's a romance involving big ideas, the biggest ideas. It's long, it's serious, it's a lot of fun.
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75The storytelling in A Royal Affair is traditional bordering on square. But the historical drama itself - about how an idealistic German doctor influenced a silly king, romanced a queen, and brought the Age of Enlightenment to 18th-century Denmark - is kind of amazing.
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63A Royal Affair is basically a good-looking set of historical Cliffs Notes. There, is however, one excellent reason to see it: Folsgaard, who by the end has made his betrayed and bereft Christian into a figure of genuine tragedy.
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70A Royal Affair suffers from the richness of the historical material - there is so much going on here - and also, perhaps, from a patriotic desire to treat it reverently. Unfortunately it never fully comes to life.
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80This highly polished costume drama is exceptionally well-made and a model of intelligent restraint, but it is also unapologetically earnest and a bit on the bloodless side.
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90With its sumptuous settings, urgent romance and intellectual substance, A Royal Affair is a mind-opener crossed with a bodice-ripper.
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85While it's lavish and lush in all the expected costume-drama ways, A Royal Affair never bogs down in period detail. What drives the film, along with great acting, is the appetite of director Nikolaj Arcel and his boisterous co-writer Rasmus Heisterberg ("I want a fun queen!" wails Christian) for the queasy workings of political gamesmanship both above and below board.
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80Mikkelsen's unconventional features and intense talent lend a compelling edge to this expansive period piece.
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80A slam dunk in the genre, satisfying every period piece craving: torrid affair, mad king, bastard child, throngs at the palace gates and a history lesson that will be fresh to many.
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83Newcomer Følsgaard is the wild card, but he manages to make the king both villain and victim, sometimes a vindictive schemer, at others far-eyed and helpless, a puppet for the forces behind him.
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88A big budget historical drama that carries Denmark's hopes into the Oscar season. It provides still more exposure for the rising Danish star Mads Mikkelsen, the latest male sex symbol of the art house crowd.
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50Director Arcel handles the material with a stately grace that compensates for the story's predictable trajectory, though humdrum period detail and monotonous pacing too often leave the proceedings feeling only partially aroused.
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40Intrigue and eroticism abound, all of it watchable, none of it particularly exciting. And the misty widescreen photography lends the proceedings a funereal air of respectability that's like catnip to Oscar voters.
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50The film is too tepid in its treatment of its central character and her situation to generate any real emotive charge.
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80A voluptuous slice of historical drama that will satisfy period fans and Mikkelsen admirers equally.
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60The chemistry between Mikkelsen and Vikander barely simmers, when it should boil. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating affair of state.
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Nov 4, 201260The stand-out, though, is Mikkel Boe Folsgaard as the King. Teetering on the edge of sanity, he is both detestable and sympathetic.