The Plot

Set in 1991 this historical fiction turns Princess Diana’s existential crisis over her potential divorce from Prince Charles into a psychological drama. Set over a tense holiday period in confines of the Queen’s Sandringham estate the film explores the suffocating claustrophobia of Dian’s Royal life during the tumultuous dying stages of her infamously doomed marriage to the future king of England.

The Good

Twilight star Kristen Stewart has worked hard to shed the reluctant mantel of Hollywood Starlet by focusing almost exclusively on serious dramatic work in low budget dramas. That path has led her to the opportunity to play one of the most iconic women of the 20^th Century on screen in a credible project from an accomplished screenwriter and director. Stewart earnestly seizes the opportunity, physical and vocally transforming herself into the iconic Diana to an extent that will almost certainly see her attracting numerous awards nominations.

Beneath a mop of Blonde hair and armed with a mostly convincing British accent, Stewart does her very best to do justice to the role and transform Princess Diana’s supposed ‘darkest days’ into an arresting descent into mental turmoil and an ultimately cathartic emergence.

For those that are addicted to the real life and fictitious royal drama this will be another sumptuously set slice of familiar storytelling. Likewise younger generations perhaps lured in by Stewart’s appeal will find the sombre events of this royal era conveniently reimagined as a suitably gripping and overtly symbolic psychological drama.

The Bad

Between Netflix’s onging series The Crown and several other biographical films of vastly varying quality the absurdly well publicised and infamous personal struggles of Diana Princess of Wales have already been painstakingly examined and laid fully bare for audiences on numerous occasions. So however well-intentioned or written any fresh ‘take’ on this well-known and ultimately tragic public figure is, there will always be difficult questions for it to answer about how respectful or necessary it is to regurgitate relatively recent history on screen.

It certainly doesn’t hold any educative value as Diana herself was overly open about every intimate detail of her own life. So at best any ‘new storytelling’ can only really serve as crowd pleasing entertainment. Unfortunately as with all ‘fictionalised’ historical dramas there’s a very real risk that this ultimately serves to entrench historical inaccuracies and rewrite the innermost lives of public figures in a more crowd-pleasing and dramatic way.

At times it’s perhaps difficult for audiences to connect the coldly cruel and elitist pantomime villains the British Royal family are so often portrayed as, with the increasingly geriatric and seemingly docile reality. Likewise this film’s subplots about Diana feeling herself haunted by the ghost of Anne Boleyn, a contentious pheasant hunt and an intensely dependent friendship with a fictions royal dresser largely feels like clumsy and convenient shorthand.

Overall despite seemingly well intentioned performances from Stewart and a strong supporting cast there’s plenty of grounds to accuse the film of exploiting poetic licence too much in transforming Diana’s ‘imagined’ private life into a well-dressed royal soap opera.

Even if supposedly merely symbolic, the film’s brazen choice to portray Diana as suffering from hallucinatory and suicidal mental turmoil before emerging into a rose tinted escape as a KFC munching people’s princess and newly empowered mother/woman raises some difficult questions

The Ugly Truth

Spencer is a suitable star vehicle for Kristen Stewart that mostly re-treads and questionably reimagines relatively recent and overly familiar Royal history. Those addicted to The Crown will certainly be compellingly intrigued by this more anguished and sensationalised exploration of Diana. While others will inevitably feel that yet another dramatization of the ‘fictional’ private life of one of the most famous and overly publicised women of the 20^th Century is largely unnecessary and perhaps even unwelcome.