Venice (AFP)
Funny, whimsical and fragile: the American actress Kristen Stewart succeeds in her perilous bet to play Princess Diana, who died 24 years ago, in "Spencer", a film by Pablo Larrain presented Friday at the Venice Film Festival.
Does this icon, dissected in many documentaries, series and films, still have something to reveal?
In almost two hours, the Chilean filmmaker responds in the affirmative by universalizing the intimacy of this woman who can no longer breathe, stifled by the corseted protocol of the Windsor but refusing to give up her freedom.
"A fable drawn from a tragedy": the opening of the film sets the tone.
It's Christmas and the royal family is meeting in full force at Sandringham Castle, set in the middle of impeccable French formal gardens, very photogenic but conducive to melancholy.
Everything is settled in line but it is counting without Diana, who arrives at the wheel of her convertible Porsche after the arrival of the queen, almost a crime of lese-majesté.
Like a dog in a bowling game, she cannot bow to the shackles of the quasi-military rules that govern the daily life of the Windsors: meals at fixed times with the appropriate clothing labeled for each occasion.
Chilean director Pablo Larrain and American actress Kristen Stewart pose before the screening of "Spencer" at the Venice Film Festival, September 3, 2021 Filippo MONTEFORTE AFP
This well-ordered ballet cracks under the blows of Diana, who for her part is gradually losing ground: her husband's infidelities with "her" (Camilla, the one whose name we do not mention), the eyes of others and the eating disorders which torment her do not help.
She rejects this life and looks back with nostalgia on the freedom of her childhood.
- "Like an insect" -
"We didn't just want to create his replica, but to use the cinema and its tools to give life to an inner world that strikes the right balance between the mystery and the fragility of his character," explained Pablo Larrain, who said to himself fascinated by its "mystery" and its "magnetism", "perfect elements for a film".
The presence of Diana / Kristen irradiates the screen, to the point of totally eclipsing the secondary characters, who gravitate like unwelcome butterflies around an incandescent bulb: just like in the photos taken during her lifetime, we only see her. .
Served by impeccable costumes and music mixing classical and jazz, Diana leads or suffers the dance, but always remains at the center, to her utter despair.
Chilean director Pablo Larrain and American actress Kristen Stexart during a photocall for the film "Spencer" at the Venice Film Festival, September 3, 2021 MIGUEL MEDINA AFP
A servant gives him a wise piece of advice: "They won't change, you have to change, you" Waste of time!
She also has no illusions about her "beauty, useless as a garment" and which condemns her to live "under a microscope like an insect whose head and legs are cut off."
She sees herself as a new Ann Boleyn, one of the wives that Henry VIII will cheat and end up having beheaded.
The scene where Diana and Charles, separated by a very symbolic pool table, try to explain themselves, perfectly sums up the dialogue of the deaf between these two incompatible personalities who will end up leaving each other.
“The saddest thing about this story is that we'll never know who she really was, and yet that was all she wanted, to tell her story herself,” Kristen Stewart observed to reporters.
American actress Kristen Stewart arrives on the pontoon of the Excelsior hotel, during the 78th Venice Film Festival, September 3, 2021 Filippo MONTEFORTE AFP
Through "Spencer", the maiden name of Diana, Pablo Larrain wanted "to deepen the process at the base of Diana's choices, which oscillates between doubt and determination and ends up choosing freedom", "a decision that defined his legacy".
Riding on the "miracle" of Kristen Stewart's performance (dixit Larrain!), "Spencer" brilliantly manages to escape the pitfalls wrecked in 2013 by "Diana", with Naomi Watts in the title role, both the most expensive of the films having been devoted to the princess and one of the worst, by the general opinion.
The Guardian newspaper went so far as to write that sixteen years after Diana's death in Paris in 1997, at the age of 36, in a car accident, the film signed "another horrible death" for the princess.
© 2021 AFP