REVIEW: Spencer (London Film Festival 2021)

Spencer

In his latest film, Pablo Larraín continues to play out our fascination with private lives and public personas.

Spencer gives us a woman on the verge of a breakdown during one final, terrible Christmas with her forbidding in-laws. It just so happens that the woman is Diana, Princess of Wales, and the in-laws are the British Royal Family. Where Larraín’s previous portrait of a famous historical woman, Jackie, made her a free agent, Spencer traps its protagonist in the opulence of Sandringham and its grounds.1

However, Diana is not just a prisoner of privilege, but of her own persona. Stopping at a local cafe to ask for directions, all the locals can do is gawp at her; at this coiffed and attired alien in their midst. Diana looks like a Hollywood star, appropriate given that she is played by Kristen Stewart.

Steven Knight’s script manages to sidestep most of the cliches of the tragic, glamorous “People’s Princess”, which have marred other tellings. We know how Diana’s story eventually, inevitably must end, but the film is not preoccupied with this: as Diana reminds her to young sons (Jack Nielsen and Freddie Spry), there is no future here – only past and present.

Overseen by the staunch Equerry Major Gregory (Timothy Spall, sinisterly even-tempered), she’s forced to participate in arbitrary traditions; like the ceremonial weighing, by which all guests must have gained 3lbs over the holidays, just to prove how much they’ve enjoyed themselves. All Diana’s dresses have been picked out in advance. Her only ally is her dresser Maggie (Sally Hawkins, played with wonderful delicacy).

Diana is impulsive, flighty, unable to play the game of being a royal. The film draws comparisons, both subtly – the motley tartan she wears in the opening scene – and later explicitly, between her and the local peasants, which the royals hunt for sport. Jonny Greenwood’s “baroque jazz” score has touches of Altman’s Gosford Park, only the vibe here is less murder mystery than a horror of manners.

The first appearance of the Queen (Stella Gonet) is preceded by a gaggle of corgis, like waddling heralds. Diana’s estranged husband, Charles (Jack Farthing), jaw set disapprovingly, looks like an embalmed resident of the Overlook Hotel, and indeed Claire Mathon’s gauzy cinematography lends to the impression of Sandringham as a haunted house, one where there are always eyes watching, judging.

Spencer is a film thicketed in meta-textuality: The Shining2, Rebecca3, even Hammer Horror.4.

In its latest reaches, though, as its protagonist continues to spiral,5 Spencer goes off kilter; relying more on tracking shots and shifting its attention to the mother-son relationship. The tenor of these scenes feels out-of-place, improvisational even; like they’ve been lifted from a rom-com. Progressively, Spencer goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. The final scene is likely to be discussed, and mocked, with some regularity in coming months.

There are moments of brilliance – the delivery of metal food cases to the Sandringham kitchen6 or Diana striding out across a field in her heels to recover a jacket from a scarecrow. Stewart brings a fey strength to the fraught lead role – crucially, embodying, never impersonating – and will certainly be in awards consideration, as should Spall and Hawkins be in their supporting roles.

But, sadly, where Diana stumbles but does not fall, the film sadly does.

Spencer is due for release in the UK on November 5th, 2021

  1. Even her bathroom shower resembles a (rib)cage.
  2. There’s a scene in a brightly patterned bathroom a la Room 237 in which things are not as they seem.
  3. Any of the inhabitants of Sandringham are potential Mrs. Danvers, with the exception of Maggie and Chef Darren (a kinder, gentler Shaun Harris, in the vein of his recent performance in The Green Knight.
  4. The vibration of the organ in the scene where Diana must face the press could bring down Castle Dracula.
  5. Opinions may vary as to the ethics of depicting Diana’s private struggles, such as her bulimia, in detail while devoting a single throwaway line to her public works.
  6. You’d think they’d contain radioactive material rather than fruit de mer.

Author: robertmwallis

Graduate of Royal Holloway and the London Film School. Founder of Of All The Film Sites; formerly Of All The Film Blogs. Formerly Film & TV Editor of The Metropolist and Official Sidekick at A Place to Hang Your Cape. Co-host of The Movie RobCast podcast (formerly Electric Shadows) and member of the Online Film Critics Society.

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