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 over the queen. Brown takes considerable liberties with court protocol, especially by addressing Her Majesty as ""woman"". He also quickly takes control over the Queen's daily activities, further aggravating the tensions between himself and the royal family and servants. The moniker ""Mrs Brown"", used both at the time and in the film, implied an improper, and perhaps sexual, relationship. The film does not directly address the contemporary suspicions that the Queen and Brown had had a sexual relationship and perhaps had even secretly married (see the article on Brown), though cartoons from the satirical magazine "Punch" are shown as being