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Stephen Frears's new film, The Queen, opens this weekend across the UK. I saw it at a press screening earlier this week, and everything you've heard about Dame Helen Mirren's extraordinary is true. Michael Sheen deserves as many plaudits for his portrayal of Tony Blair -- though "portrayal" may not be the right word for a near-perfect impersonation. The film explores the meeting of two different worlds in the relationship between the Queen and her Prime Minister, set against one of the most bizarre cultural moments in recent British history -- the death of Diana.

Mirren's Queen struggles with a profound sense of divine right; something that is understandably difficult for a modern audience to grasp in a contemporary figure. Sheen's Blair is a youthful moderniser coming to terms with a curious yet enduring institution. The Queen is stiff and painfully formal; Blair is relaxed and media-savvy. Yet both are changed, they move closer to each other through their competing responses to Diana's death.

Helen Mirren has said that she would be "devastated if the Queen feels that I've betrayed her in my portrayal of her". Nevertheless, I can't imagine the Queen will appreciate much of this. The Royals come across as constitutional automata, a family of psychologically flawed comic characters tragically out of step with the world around them. Don't expect a Royal Premiere.