Pablo Larrain profiles the late Princess of Wales during the 1991 Christmas weekend at Sandringham before she and Prince Charles separated. It’s a stunning performance piece that may catapult Kristen Stewart onto the Oscar dais.
Queen Elizabeth’s Sandringham House is an immense Jacobean mansion, isolated on 20,000 acres on the Norfolk Coast. It’s where England’s dysfunctional Royal Family celebrates the winter holiday.
Labeled “A Fable from a True Tragedy,” it begins as self-sabotaging Diana (Kristen Stewart), who ditched her security detail in London, gets lost driving her BMW convertible and is chastised for arriving late. Like a captive animal, closely watched Diana is herded from one frosty family gathering to another, observing tradition and strict protocols. Required to change fashionable outfits several times a day, her only confidante is her dresser, Maggie (Sally Hawkins).
Forced to wear the large pearls Charles gave her—after presenting his mistress Camilla with an identical gift—in one scene, Diana yanks the necklace from her neck, dropping pearls in her soup, then popping them into her mouth and chewing them up. Admittedly bulimic and lonely, increasingly paranoid, self-pitying Diana is haunted by the ghost of another wronged wife, Anne Boleyn, beheaded by adulterous Henry VIII. Perhaps Chilean director Pablo Larrain conceived this as a companion piece to Jackie (2016) with Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy after JFK’s assassination.
Likewise, Diana’s travails are condensed into a short period of time and presented with the utmost compassion. It’s surreal and absurdist. Larrain is particularly effective in evoking psychological horror, heightening Diana’s emotions, ferociously embodied by Kristin Stewart. FYI: Those ‘pearls’ were actually crunchy chocolate candy. Recommended for Princess Diana or royals library programming and special events, or social studies classes focusing on the monarchy.
Check out more films about Princess Diana