Spencer: Movie Review

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Sean Harris, Sally Hawkins

Director: Pablo Larrain

With its opening title card of "A Fable from a True Tragedy", Ema and Jackie director Pablo Larrain makes it abundantly clear what it intends to do with this biopic of Princess Diana.

As military soldiers drop off catering boxes filled to the brim with ingredients and chefs march in royal formation into the house of Windsor on Christmas Eve, Kristen Stewart's Diana is lost on the roads. Pulling up at a roadside cafe, she wanders in, asking where she is as all around her go silent.

It's fair to say that director Larrain is in awe of his interpretation of his subject too, as he re-imagines what life could have been for Diana across three days of Christmas within the royal household she so desperately tried to reshape and reject.

But it's a curse to this film in many ways.

So drenched in its desire to be on Diana's side as it is from the get go, the film loses any semblance of what a reality could be, and any hope of partisanship from behind the camera could be proffered by Larrain.

The Chilean director is so enamoured of his subject (as played excellently by Kristen Stewart, all tics and whispered vocal tones) that he doesn't really look to present a rounded portrait of imaginings, preferring to allow Diana only really to interact with a limited number of what could be perceived as real people (the butler, the dresser, the chef) as opposed to the royalty who are precariously placed on the outskirts of the movie.

It may be magnificently helmed with Larrain drowning the screen in the opulence of the surroundings and the excesses of the Royal societal norms (from weigh-ins to the stifling discomfort of stuffy traditions), but Spencer feels like it keeps everyone at arms' length - other than clutching its subject close to its bosom.

As the audience is drawn closer inside Diana's mind, and hallucinations (eating pearls at a dinner, seeing Anne Boleyn), Stewart ramps up the nervier edges of Diana, playing on the tics of twitching hands, subtly moving her head to the side, and dialling down the whispered tones. It's easy to see why she's picked up award plaudits for the role, but it's a polarising one that seems to draw on some of her awkwardness that she demonstrated early in her career in The Cake Eaters.  

Spall excels in his role, moving from cruel taunter and enforcer of rules to potentially hidden ally, and Harris has a warmth as the chef who occasionally meets Diana out of the grounds of Windsor. They're minor roles in the proceedings and in a film whose camera is intent only on following its subject.

Ultimately, Spencer is a polarising experience - a sumptuously presented experience whose cinematography and score from Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood help the onscreen soar. It's a film that never really presents more depth to Diana, nor is it one that will provide more insights - in many ways, this take on Spencer is like a painted canvas that looks wondrous from afar, but up close, it's difficult to fully find a focus.