Go see Spencer “and the next day you will wonder: did I go to the cinema last night or did I have a cheese dream?”, says Deborah Ross in The Spectator. I’m not saying Pablo Larrain’s film is anything other than brilliant. Thanks to a super-smart script, it somehow feels true even if it isn’t. “Broken woman, unfeeling family. That seems about right.” Kristen Stewart carries the film. She looks nothing like Diana, but is somehow Diana. I think it’s called “great acting”. But did she really clear the room of staff by saying she wished to masturbate? “Did she really just eat a pearl?”
Spencer launches into the supernatural, “and even horror too”, says David Sexton in The New Statesman. We get it, the royal family is evil. Timothy Spall plays a lantern-jawed equerry who wouldn’t be out of place in The Shining. “Go! Run!”, the ghost of Anne Boleyn advises Diana at a fictional Sandringham Christmas. Diana identifies intensely with a dead pheasant: “Beautiful, but not very bright.” Granted, Stewart plays her with a vim that deserves an Oscar. But Larrain’s big mistake is believing that Diana’s travails were epoch-defining. The symbolism throughout is so heavy-handed as almost to impress in the end, for sheer bone-headedness. Still, I can’t wait for his Meghan.
Spencer is in cinemas now. Watch the trailer here.