REVIEWED - THE QUEENHelen Mirren gives an Oscar-worthy performance as Queen Elizabeth in this fascinating and touching drama, writes Michael Dwyer

THE thoroughly jaded observation that a week is a long time in politics, is refreshed with acute pertinence in The Queen, which precisely captures the growing chasm between democracy and the monarchy in Britain in the days after the death of Princess Diana. Director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Peter Morgan judiciously blend all the established facts with informed imagination and conjecture for a heady mix that, despite our familiarity with its central storyline, produces one of the most fascinating and entertaining movies of recent years.

First, it harks back to May 2nd, 1997, when Tony Blair (played by Michael Sheen) became the youngest prime minister elected in Britain during the 20th century. Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) is watching the news on television while she has her portrait painted. "You are my 10th prime minister, Mr Blair," she pointedly tells him. "My first was Winston Churchill."

The early scenes capture Blair's youthful eagerness, and his discomfort with the stiff formalities and delicacies of language in dealing with the royalty. That relationship changes a few months later, as the film cuts to a night scene in Paris on August 30th, as paparazzi encircle the Ritz, and Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed take what will be the last car journey of their lives.

Within an hour, Alastair Campbell (Mark Bazely), Blair's press secretary and sometime ventriloquist, is immersed in writing the prime minister's speech, in which he coins the term "people's princess". The royals remain emotionally and geographically removed from what has happened, aloof and ensconced in Balmoral Castle hundreds of miles away.

Blair's savvy, media-conscious response to the death of the princess is immediate and strikes a deep chord with the nation, whereas the queen initially is unwilling to make a statement or a public appearance, and she proposes a private funeral that is "not a fairground attraction".

While the royals spend the week stag hunting in Scotland - a close-up of their magnificent prey wordlessly implies their heartlessness - the plain people and their flowers are thronging around Buckingham Palace in a phenomenal outpouring of mass grief. A storm is gathering in the land, posing a serious threat to the stability of the monarchy.

Eschewing the easy option of Spitting Image-style satire, Frears cuts to the human core of the story, as the relatively inexperienced prime minister sets about re-connecting the much older queen with her public, and Mirren's wonderfully subtle and convincing performance reveals the vulnerability beneath the monarch's imperious facade. The only trace of caricature is in James Cromwell's portrayal of Prince Philip as cranky and bombastic - which appears well founded - as he snorts in indignation at the incessant Diana coverage on TV.

After decades of British movies and TV series on long-dead monarchs - just last month Mirren won an Emmy for playing Queen Elizabeth I (and she deserves an Oscar for The Queen) - Frears has dared to go behind the closed doors of the present royal family, to tackle their relevance and the machinations of power in a media age obsessed with celebrity.

The result is an enthralling, incisive, witty and relevant film that is ultimately moving, with a superlative cast feasting on Morgan's scintillating screenplay,.

This is the second collaboration between Frears and Morgan to feature the remarkable Michael Sheen as Blair. The first, the TV film The Deal, was built around the 1994 Islington dinner where Gordon Brown agreed to let Blair stand as Labour Party leader and later succeed him.

The Queen draws to a close on an inescapable irony, from which the same team may yet make a third film, following Blair from the May 1997 days when it was widely accepted that things can only get better, to the prime minister's own subsequent disconnect with the British public.