Mrs Brown Cannes Film Festival and released in the United Kingdom on 5 September 1997. Dench was nominated for many awards for her performance, including the Academy Award for Best Actress, but lost to Helen Hunt for her role in "As Good as It Gets". Several screens of text giving some background are shown before a bust is shown flying over a palace wall and shattering into countless pieces. The film shows the story of a bereaved Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) and her relationship with a Scottish servant, John Brown (Billy Connolly), and the subsequent uproar it provoked. Brown had been a
Mrs Brown of Wales has hurled the Queen's favourite bust of Brown up and over the palace wall, referencing the film's opening sequence. The film's closing crawl notes that ""John Brown's diary was never found."" On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 92% based on 50 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Thanks to some top notch acting, the chemistry between its stars, and a witty, thoughtful script, "Mrs. Brown" delivers a nuanced and entertaining, if not entirely factual, account of a seldom explored historical relationship." Metacritic, another review aggregator,