The film opens in 1864 with Queen Victoria three years into her formal mourning for her beloved consort, Prince Albert. Her mourning is not only formal (the queen makes no public appearances, all members of the large royal family and the court wear black), it has virtually paralyzed the monarch and all those around her, and -- to the growing concern of her advisors and the savvy Prime Minister Disraeli (Anthony Sher) -- is beginning to paralyze the monarchy's role in government itself. The queen's grief is impenetrable, and her near-catatonia shows no signs of abating; until John Brown (Billy Connolly), a feisty Scot and former attendant to the prince at the royal residence at Balmoral, is called. A delicate, yet very strong, friendship between the dour queen and the spirited outdoorsman is born; and despite court jealousies and tabloid-driven, politically nurtured gossip (Victoria was jeeringly referred to as Mrs. Brown), it continues until his death some 20 years later.

Needless to say, this modest but profoundly moving portrayal of the rare symbiosis between a very human, natural man, and a woman defined first by grief and ultimately by the extraordinarily rarefied expectations of her public duties, has an uncanny resonance in light of recent events.

The most brilliant facet of this little bijou is the wonderful Judi Dench's performance. Much better known in her native Britain -- critically acclaimed for her stage work in the West End, more popularly known for television roles -- Dame Judi has been seen by American audiences infrequently but to memorable effect. (She played Miss Lash, the lusty romantic novelist who raised the eyebrows of Maggie Smith's prim chaperone in A Room With A View, and played a chilly, social-climbing interior decorator in the adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust.) By her peers and much of her public, Dench is considered, along with Dame Maggie, as one of the greatest actors of English-speaking theatre and film. In Mrs. Brown, her portrayal of Victoria has a dazzling subtlety -- by turns, a black hole of inconsolability, the most powerful monarch in the world who also happens to be a fragile human being in desperate need of a friend, and a woman torn between healing herself and preserving a historical tradition of government.

Connolly is fine as the cocky Highlander who cuts right through the falderol and protocol to revive the spirit of a woman he honors, respects, and admires. The movie doesn't glamorize Brown or imply that he was without weaknesses, but it gets exactly right the profoundly moving, always unexpected, miracle of two souls who help one another feel a bit more at home on the planet. With his stringy ponytail, rough hands, and colloquial Scottish burr, Brown is, most certainly, no royal. But he is, just as certainly, a prince.