A United Kingdom is packaged as a romance: The film’s poster shows an embracing interracial couple gazing out over an African sunset. And it is a romance, in that it’s about a man and a woman and they’re in love. But it’s different from your standard will-they-or-won’t-they because they get married within the first few minutes. It’s what happens next—colonialism! racism! history!—that gives the movie its guts. And some heart, too.
