Viceroy’s House (12)

three stars

Dir: Gurinder Chadha

With: Hugh Bonneville, Gillian Anderson

Runtime: 106 minutes

IF you ever wondered what Downton Abbey would look like transported to the last days of the Raj, venture no further than Gurinder Chadha’s drama.

It is not just that Viceroy’s House features Hugh “Earl of Grantham” Bonneville as Lord Mountbatten, but there is that same sense of upstairs/downstairs about the piece, only in this case the downtrodden party is an entire nation, India, desperate to be free of British rule.

Bonneville plays Lord Mountbatten, with Gillian Anderson as his wife Edwina. It is 1947, and Mountbatten has been charged with managing the transfer of power. With no agreement between political leaders, he begins the process of partition. Lines are being drawn on a map, millions of lives are being turned upside down with many losing everything in the process, and a race against time is on.

Aside from a sub-plot involving a young couple from opposite sides of the religious divide, the focus stays very much on the Brits, for good and ill. Bonneville, looking as much like Mountbatten as I do, does not stray far from his Downton persona, while Anderson’s terribly pukka accent is so sharp it could etch glass. In time, the Pathe newsreel air of the piece, initially charming, begins to grate.

Still, Chadha (Bend it Like Beckham) deftly manages to capture the frantic mood of the times and the politicking that went on, not least by the British, and the settings are magnificent.