Spencer: Christmas at the In-Laws is a 'Royal' Pain in this Dark Immersive Princess Di Fable
By Jim Slotek
Rating: A-minus
When we elevate people to the status of tragic pop culture icon - especially when they play a part in history - an unanswerable question at any time becomes even more so.
To wit: What is it like to be them?
The almost gothic psychological horror film Spencer, what director Pablo Larraín has called a “tone poem” about the late Diana, Princess of Wales, is a best-guess effort about one of the most talked about and written about Royals of the last Century. But for all the portrayals, her heart and state-of-mind remains a mystery. As it happens, that’s a perfect scenario for this particular filmmaker.
Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in Spencer.
With his experiential films Jackie (about the days in Jacqueline Kennedy’s life following her husband’s assassination) and now Spencer, Larrain eschews the traditional Peter Morgan/The Crown/The Queen route of taking other people’s testimonials and memories of the Royals at their word and constructing a three-act narrative based on them.
When you’re telling stories of the dead, everything is fiction, whether it’s taken from other people’s often untrustworthy memories, or made up out of whole cloth.
So, making up the existential nightmare inside the mind of Diana (Kristen Stewart) as she prepared to flee her husband and the Royals is no different than imagining what was going through the mind of the doomed Anne Boleyn (who, by the way, is a significant hallucinatory character in this movie, played by Amy Manson).
Larrain’s “fable taken from tragic reality” (as it’s described in an opening graphic) is set during a Christmas executed with military precision by the staff at the Queen’s Sandringham estate (where Diana had ironically grown up on a rented part of the property).
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
There is interaction with people who are caricatures of people, and joyless robots who are supposed to represent the Royals. If nothing else, Spencer makes a convincing case that an invitation to Christmas with the Queen might not be any fun at all.
As for Diana, this is not the blushing “people’s princess” we’re meeting. After a decade of marital betrayal, failure to embrace formality, bulimia, rejection and a complicated stalker/prey relationship with the press, the Diana we meet getting lost in her car in the British countryside (astounding the regulars at a pub where she asks for directions) is more wounded animal than fairy-tale princess, full of crust and cynicism.
The only softness in her life (and frankly, the only humanly drawn characters) are her sons, William and Harry (Jack Nielen and Freddie Spry) with whom she plays imaginative games and is able to let her guard down and warmth out.
All else is to be endured. From her unacceptably late arrival, to her unchaperoned forays outside the palace in the dead of night, she is either emotionally cauterized from the in-laws she must share Christmas with (hence their mannequin-like demeanor), or treated patronizingly like a nutter by most of the staff. The exception to the latter is her most trusted dresser Maggie (Sally Hawkins), who like most of the staff may not be trustworthy at all.
For Stewart, who has quietly become one of the best young actresses on the scene (and the only American to win France’s Oscar, the César), portraying this descent-into-near-madness had to be irresistible. And as Natalie Portman did in Jackie, she convincingly channels her nightmare onscreen into renewed strength.
The largely interior cinematography by Claire Mathon is stark, cold and beautiful, backed by a soundtrack that ranges from funereal chamber music to discordant jazz-noise meant to inspire dread.
If that sounds uncomfortable, well, that’s the point of being her.
CLICK HERE to read Bonnie Laufer’s Q&A with Spencer director Pablo Larrain.
CLICK HERE to read Jim Slotek’s TIFF piece on Kristen Stewart’s In Conversation With… Spencer session.
Spencer. Directed by Pablo Larrain. Starring Kristen Stewart, Sally Hawkins, Jack Nielen and Freddie Spry. Opens in theatres Friday, Nov. 5.