“They don’t want real people. There are two of us the real and the ones they photograph.” So says Prince Charles to Princess Diana in Pablo Larrain’s stylish, slightly surreal, SPENCER.
Kristen Stewart depicts a princess of wails, a woebegone royal railing against the benighted establishment she has married into, and trying to assert her reality outside the artifice of rank.
Monarchists will probably choke on their pearls as Diana does in a superb soup slurping scene that makes the Windsor dining table resemble a mortuary slab.
Pheasants feature in the film, symbolic in a myriad of ways, fine feathered but bird brained, fodder for trophy fusiliers rather than food gathering hunters. Diana is certainly in the cross hairs of both the Royal family and the press. Is she just a pheasant pluck?
There’s a touch of the peasant when the abdicating Princess absconds with her sons, the heirs and graces of the realm, fleeing the pheasant slaughter and alighting with her kids on a KFC drive thru.
In SPENCER, Diana fixates and fantasises Anne Boleyn. Although she is more concerned about losing her mind than her head, yet the prospect of execution does crop up.
Written by Steven Knight, SPENCER reads like a Republican call to arms mixed with a Grimm fairy tale.
Apart from Stewart’s spell binding performance as Spencer, there are a brace of tip top turns.
Sally Hawkins is splendid as Maggie, the Princess’ preferred dresser and confidant.
Sean Harris is the savvy Darren, the head chef and kitchen majordomo at Sandringham, servant to the sovereign but not subservient.
Timothy Spall, as the appalling Major Alistair Gregory, John Bull bully and blunt instrument of the Queen.
The film is a pleasant feast for the eye, with superb cinematography by Claire Mathon.
Costume designer Jacqueline Durran has done a consummate job on the wardrobe. She began her career on Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and there is something of the Kubrick look on show in her designs here.
The Kubrick allusion is amplified in Johnny Greenwood’s score, a fusion of jazz and classical, ancient and modern, in turns melodious and discordant.
SPENCER is well worth seeing, possibly more for its style than its substance, which, ostensibly, is what it’s all about.
Richard Cotter