Diana Spencer

(Netflix Streaming, June 2022) My expectations for Spencer ran very, very low: combining an actress I don’t particularly care about with a historical figure I have almost no interest in, the film nonetheless manages to create some unexpected sympathy out of its unpromising elements. Kirsten Stewart is far from an actress I like – her very limited “woe is me, a victim” range can be effective in the right context (I keep going back to Adventureland as an example, although she was not badly cast in the Twilight series either) but only a fraction of all roles are fit for someone like her. Meanwhile, I have an almost total lack of attachment to the story of Princess Diana Spencer – as a colonial, I don’t relate all that well to the British monarchy, and could never find anything but sadness in her story. A film featuring Stewart as Diana at a critical (but largely internal) junction in her unhappy marriage with Prince Charles, Spencer does have the credit of matching actress range with the requirements of the role – Spencer is here portrayed as a mopey broken woman going through the motions of conforming to the quasi-impossible requirements of the nation’s princess. The action may take place over a weekend, but there are years of build up to it (and, ironically known to the audience, further years to go afterward). Not wholly dissimilar to other recent works poking at the institution of monarchy (The Favourite comes to mind), Spencer uses fantasy sequences, expressionist moments and a quasi-endless succession of shots showing Stewart staring distantly into space as ways to create a powerful sense of unease. We’re told by people close to the figure that the film captures quite a bit of her personality, and much of that has to go with Stewart’s deadened acting style used in service of an appropriate topic matter. (Meanwhile, if you’re worried that a modern princess film featuring Stewart will not have Sapphic content, don’t worry – Spenser has that covered.)  This is, obviously, not my kind of film – the pacing is deliberately interminable considering that this is a single-mood piece reinforced over a period of time. But I found it far more tolerable than I initially anticipated, and Stewart a most appropriate fit for the material. The film doesn’t raise my interest either in Stewart or Spencer, but that’s not necessarily a problem – it’s mostly about re-creating an experience (that of being stuck with stuck-up royals for the weekend) and it does that rather well.