A Royal Night Out (12A) Verdict: Flawed but sweet
ONE day, Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana of Cambridge will doubtless learn how her greatgrandmother, on the night in May 1945 that Britain celebrated Victory in Europe, was allowed to cast off at least some of the shackles of royal protocol and, with her younger sister Margaret, mingle with the exultant crowds in Piccadilly and The Mall.
She’d be well advised not to get that story about a previous generation of princesses from A Royal Night Out, however, for as well as taking mighty, if mostly forgivable, liberties with the truth, Julian Jarrold’s film never really finds an identity.
Like one of those many happy drunks making their way home 70 years ago tonight, it lurches wildly one way and then the other: from Cinderellai n- reverse, fairy- tale romance to slapstick, knockabout comedy to sober history lesson and back again.
The film chronicles the VE Night escapades of the two princesses, 19-year-old Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon), and Margaret (Bel Powley), not yet 15. Beguilingly, it is rooted in reality.
The sisters really did receive permission from their parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (here played by Rupert Everett and Emily Watson), to join in the fun, and slipped incognito out of Buckingham Palace, as footloose and fancy-free as a hastily assembled group of 16 chaperones would allow.
In the film, there are only two chaperones, a pair of Army officers turned by Jarrold, and screenwriters Trevor De Silva and Kevin Hood, into the closest thing to the Chuckle Brothers that wartime London could muster.
Which jars somewhat, and is a shame, because in many ways A Royal Night Out is rather sweet. It opens with Winston Churchill growling that ‘we may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing’.
Understandably, the princesses want to rejoice on the other side of the palace gates, but the Queen and her Forties vowels stand firm: ‘No, ebsolutely not!’
Young Margaret is aghast. ‘We’ll be walled up in this ghastly mausoleum for the rest of our blooming lives,’ she wails.
Eventually, the King relents, persuaded by Elizabeth, who astutely points out that — on the SO outside looking in — they will be able to determine what the people really think of their monarch.
SO OFF they trip to the Ritz, in the not-so reliable hands of the officers Chuckle, after which they lose one another in the search for Trafalgar Square and embark separately on a series of unlikely misadventures, breaking their 1am curfew by several hours.
‘One little whiff of freedom and they’re gorn,’ complains the Queen.
And not only gorn, but gorn to a Soho ‘knockingshop’ run by a devoutly monarchist spiv (the excellent Roger Allam), then on to Chelsea Barracks for, in Margaret’s words, a ‘wizard all-nighter’.
But the core of the story is the relationship between Elizabeth and a disillusioned airman ( Jack Reynor), reluctantly squiring t his attractive young woman through the streets looking for her sister.
He has met her on a number 14 bus and knows her not as a princess, just as too posh and privileged to carry money. And him? Is he a deserter? The film keeps us guessing.
He’s certainly no fan of the Royal Family, the only dissenting voice in a pub where the joyful revellers stop rolling out the barrel to listen to the King’s speech over the wireless.
Ah, the King’s speech. Among the numerous