While Bollywood stars may be getting a raw deal in international cinema, Ali Fazal promises to a breath of fresh air in Victoria and Abdul, getting top billing and equal prominence with a global legend of Dame Judi Dench’s status.
It is almost impossible to project a relationship of equals, when two actors are meant to be representing a culturally socially and economically imbalanced relationship. And when those two actors are the formidable Judi and the relatively raw and inexperienced Ali, the chasm between the haves and have-nots becomes even more non-negotiable.
But Ali manages to make the relationship between Queen Victoria and her Man Friday, in this colonial cross-cultural non-romance, absolutely convincing. It’s the way Ali looks at Ms Dench — eyes soaked in vinegary warmth, which has nothing to do with lust for power or sex. It’s one of a mature boy-man, who adores someone far above him in rank, and age. And it’s the look which holds the trailer of director Stephen Frears’ story about the unlikeliest of friendships together.
The presentation is posh but not overblown. The humour is British but not over-dry. The warmth of the central relationship is tangible, but not cloying.
While the two central characters grip our senses in the trailer, the incidental characters also seem to have been carved out of the wood of the plausible. Judi Dench snoring off at the dinner table, her deputies declaring her insane for befriending an Indian ‘peasant’, the Queen stubbornly insisting that her new young handsome Indian Man-Friday-turned-friend teach her Urdu and the tenets of the Holy Quran, all add up to a feeling of being in the midst of a relationship that transcends convention and definition.
