I'm not sure I've ever had two Scandinavian actors to be this excited about seeing in a movie. Back in 2012, I didn't really know Alicia Vikander or Mads Mikkelsen. I didn't remember Mikkelsen from Casino Royale, and Hannibal was still a year away from premiering. I recognized Vikander for being very pretty in Anna Karenina, but that's about it. Of course, now I love them both, which made A Royal Affair an inevitability. The only obstacle was finding some time for a subtitled movie.
In a way, the mark of a good historical drama is if I feel the need to pull up the Wikipedia page about the people or events. That indicates that I'm interested by the story and want to verify how much is true. A Royal Affair does appear to be some exaggeration and infers some events. I did pull up that Wikipedia article to learn about the Enlightenment and Denmark in the 1700s, so that's a success. I liked the decision to underplay the king's mental illness. Reading about it later, a lot of his "illness" sounded like exaggerations made by a conservative society. It isn't career-best work for Vikander or Mikkelsen, and their age gap was a bit distracting, but they were good in it. The miscommunications and lies at the end made for a nice gut punch.
Oh, and this isn't the movie's fault but I got really confused about Vikander's backstory at the beginning. So, she is a Swedish woman playing a British woman who moves to Denmark to become their queen. I got so confused about why she was speaking English early on. I'm so aware of Vikander being a Swede, that I couldn't process the idea of her being a Brit adopting Danish. I'm dumb. Please ignore me.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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