OVP: Spencer (2021)

Film: Spencer (2021)

Stars: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Jack Farthing, Sean Harris, Sally Hawkins

Director: Pablo Larrain

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Kristen Stewart)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

For some reason, 24 years after her tragic death became the most-covered story I remember of my childhood until 9/11 (seriously, if you lived through Diana-mania, and I was there for the tale-end of it, it can't compare to literally any other celebrity coverage in the decades since-Bennifer & the Kardashians could never), Princess Diana is making a comeback.  There's a Diana-led musical on Netflix.  Emma Corrin is getting praise for her performance on The Crown, a role Elizabeth Debicki will be taking on in the next season.  And then we have Spencer, where Kristen Stewart, a quintessential Southern California actress takes on the blue-blooded British noblewoman who became the "People's Princess."  The film has attracted both grand praise for Stewart as well as some divisive reactions on Film Twitter (I hadn't read the reviews as I try to go into all films with an open mind, I'd just seen that the tweets were mixed).  So when I had the chance on vacation (I always try to see movies while I'm on vacation as I'm not a night life person & also I'm traveling alone so movies in new theaters feels the best approach to not just lounging in a hotel room after 6 PM), I was curious where I would land, particularly as someone who adored Lorrain's other film about a woman who the world "only wanted to be beautiful," Jackie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place over a three-day Christmas period at Sandringham Castle.  Diana (Stewart) arrives separate from her husband, and late, which is a perpetual theme of the film-Diana is always missing expectations, missing dinners, ending up in the bathroom dealing with her (true-to-life) bulimia.  She has only one friend in the house other than her two young sons, Maggie (Hawkins) a devoted dresser whom her husband Prince Charles (Farthing) is frequently trying to keep her from.  The movie takes on a supernatural element when Diana is haunted by the ghost of Anne Boleyn, whom she worries is a direct corollary to her current affair (Diana is even related to the late, beheaded queen through her older sister Mary Boleyn).  Diana worries that she's going to be replaced by Camilla, Charles true love, and whether she's losing herself in this world.  Ultimately, she leaves the castle & flees from royal life, headed to a KFC while singing "All I Need is a Miracle" with her two devoted sons in tow, hopefully freeing herself to a new life.

As you can imagine, this didn't actually happen in real life.  While there are definitely connections to real life (Diana's eating disorder, Charles' affair, the late princess's fondness for buying fast food for her children), the events in the film are presented as a fable, and play out that way.  Unlike the more realistic Jackie, Spencer takes on a different motif, a more fanciful one.  This theoretically should work.  Beautiful princesses are a staple of fairy tales, after all, and one haunted by ghosts feels all-the-more appropriate.

The problem is that Spencer never grounds itself in something real.  When you introduce such intense flights of fancy, you need more depth in the characters, and there's virtually none here.  It's a movie that wants you to treat Diana outside of what we know about her...but every other character is so inconsequential you can only rely upon your own Us Weekly-inspired shorthand.  Larrain doesn't owe us a complicated portrayal of the Queen or Prince Charles, and it's not inappropriate to view these two as villains in the Diana tale, particularly considering the tragedy that ended up befalling her (this movie has a happy ending, Diana's life did not).  But it also hurts your cause when you are making a point of giving a flesh-and-blood Diana while (on purpose) showing us nothing real in her two onscreen enemies.

This also hurts Stewart's performance.  I feel like reviews of Kristen Stewart always feel the need to defend her, but at this point we're beyond that.  Stewart's work in the Twilight movies was butchered at the time (in retrospect, if you watch the films it kind of works better as a stylized approach to schlocky fare).  But she has since turned in two Oscar-worthy turns in Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper (I'd have nominated her for both), and can give a lackluster performance without being labeled a "bad actress."  I think her accent & mimicry is to-die-for here-she has Diana down-cold, which considering she grew up in LA, is a testament to her abilities.  But she also feels adrift in a movie that oftentimes feels rudderless, and while that's more on Larrain & his story than Stewart, it also makes it harder for me to get behind this work (and I like dreamy movies like this as a rule...check out my reviews of Terrence Malick pictures).  It just can't find its center, and as a result this was a miss for me even if it was in my wheelhouse.