Jean-Marc Vallée, right, director of The Young Victoria, poses with cast members Rupert Friend and Emily Blunt in Los Angeles last Thursday. (Chris Pizzello/Associated Press)

Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallée says he had to resist succumbing to the rich sets and costumes in creating his new movie Young Victoria.

The young director of C.R.A.Z.Y., a 2005 Quebec-set drama, admits his film is a period piece. But he was also working with a script that was a tender love story and he had to capture that emotion.

"One of the challenges with period films was … not to give up and be too impressed by all the sets and locations and still focus on the emotions and the actors," Vallée told CBC News.

"I had this tendency when I was arriving on the day to shoot wide to show the characters in their environment. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve just playing with a big toy and enjoying it, doing all those great wide shots, tracking left right, in out. The challenge was to get close to the character."

Vallée said he spent months surrounded by books, researching life in England during the time when Victoria became Queen. She was just 18 when she took up the role in 1837 and Vallée wanted to capture that youthful spirit in the film.

The script by Britain's Julian Fellowes was one of the reasons he accepted the directing job, he said.

"Julian Fellowes' writing is very refined," Vallée said. "It was a romance, it was an amazing love story and I loved that young Queen — stubborn, we make mistakes, we have this kind of rock 'n' roll attitude. … It was something so different and crazy I just wanted to try the challenge."

The film had its premiere in Quebec last week and opens in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and Victoria on Friday.

British actress Emily Blunt, who stars as Victoria, already has garnered a Golden Globe nomination.

"I was very happy for her," Vallée said. "She was so good. She nailed the part and I didn't do much on the set … I'd remind her sometimes less is more."

The same advice he had to give himself as he tightened the lens on the scenes with heightened emotion.

"If you look closely there's a lot of intimate scenes where there is no coverage, there is only one shot," he said.

"It's tough for a filmmaker to let go, be humble and trust the medium, trust the script and the actors."

Victoria eventually fell in love with Prince Albert, her first cousin, played by Rupert Friend, and their romance is at the centre of the film.

Young Victoria is Vallée's first Hollywood experience — part of the lure was working with Martin Scorsese as producer.

Vallée is not altogether happy with some of the cuts the producers insisted on, saying he would have liked the film to be 10 minutes longer .

"Stay with characters five to 10 seconds longer to breathe a bit," he said.

The film is nothing like C.R.A.Z.Y., he said, but the material was so different he found he had to adapt to it.

Vallée will be back in Quebec shooting this summer, and his next project is Lost Girls and Love Hotels from the book by Catherine Hanrahan.

CBC Montreal's Cinq a Six radio program will broadcast an interview with Vallée this Saturday.