2009 (Jean-Marc Vallée) PG, 105 min
Starring: Emily Blunt, Miranda Richardson, Paul Bettany, Rupert Friend

We still celebrate her birthday every year on May 24. When we think of her, we imagine those later portraits, an unsmiling woman, a shapeless body in widow’s dark. It’s difficult to imagine Victoria as a girl, who became queen at 18 and fell in love The film offers a glimpse of what her life might have been: her isolation as a child, the controlling rules set by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and her advisor, Victoria’s stubbornness, her transition to being sovereign and the mistakes she made. Emily Blunt has the open freshness of youth; Rupert Friend reminds us that Albert, too, who died at 42, was an earnest, handsome young man, of many interests and talents. Even if history has been goosed for drama’s sake, the superb costumes and settings are magnetic, the love story of Albert and Victoria is touching, and there’s enough accurate detail to refresh our knowledge of those times.