THE QUEEN AND HER CONFIDANT

she see in him?”

A lot, apparently.

As played by the affable Ali Fazal, Abdul Karim is persuasively charming, cocky and irreverent yet attentive respectful and compassionate.

VICTORIA & ABDUL

STARRING: Judi Dench and Ali Fazal

DIRECTOR: Stephen Frears

HHHHH

The film opens with a promising, serious There has been a lot of flak aimed at this enchanting film for it subversive look at colonial relationships.

For all those who refuse to take history’s lessons lightly, here is some unsolicited advice: Get a laugh.

And I do mean, laugh. For, in spite of one very moving tearful moment, sunshine and smiles are the dominant forces in Stephen Frears’ look at the very strange yet extremely noble and dignified bonding between Queen Victoria and her young clerical Indian friend Karim, who is sent to assuage her royal ego but is soon her closest confidante and only friend in a royal household teeming with opportunists and gold diggers.

This is not to say that the film trivializes history or, as suggested by some revisionist reviewers, that it turns the relation between the conqueror and the conquered into a soppy soap opera. There is nothing soppy or sloppy about the friendship that grows between the Queen and her loyal, if somewhat selfserving, servant. Divided by cultures and continents, the two come together for a platonic friendship that defies all protocol and even basic logic. I mean, as one of the bitchy royal householders mutters under his breath, “What does