Victoria & Abdul

The Twinkly Eyed Fazal

The " true" story of the 81 year old monarch's "friendship" with her Indian man servant/teacher Abdul Karin is perhaps less well known than her attachment to the brash John Brown but under director Steven Frears' guiding hand the film is a gently comic romp into the absurdities of the Victorian British Royal family and their horror at having a matriarch who is suddenly dependent on a Muslim of lowly birth.
Frears hints that Victoria ( Judi Dench) had a roving eye for the magnificent Karin (Ali Fazal) but he bottles it slightly bigging up the sweetness and the intellectual nature of their friendship rather than to acknowledge the possible fact that the handsome clerk come Guru was in fact an opportunistic manipulator who landed on his feet before a lonely, silly old Queen sick of an arse licking court.
Personally I thought that the real story story lay more with the more pessimistic version of the truth rather than the sanitized take  and the whole thing left me with rather a sour taste in my mouth, which was disappointing.
Dench is wonderful as Victoria and I must say that the whole film builds to a classic Judi moment , when the old Queen faces off her son Berti ( Eddie Izzard) with a bravura speech that she is indeed not insane in befriending a native! ... , so much so that I can see another Oscar nomination on the cards.
Fazal is cute as a button in his, slightly more difficult role but the cuteness does fade when one questions that the friendship was one less wholesome than originally portrayed.
6/10