Spencer * * * * ½

Well if you're looking for "The Crown" on the big screen you're not going to get it. 

Director Pablo Larrain gave us the excellent Jackie (Kennedy) in 2017. His approach with this film is similar as we find Diana in a fragile mental state which we share rather than observe. 

Kirsten Stewart plays Diana Princess of Wales and as always, she gets it right. She must be one of the most talented actreses working in film today. 

From the opening scenes, where we learn she has decided to shun her protective escort and drive to Sandringham herself, we are given an insight.  She loses her way and in the end pulls into a roadside cafe to ask direction.  "I'm lost. Completly lost!", she tells the diners who look at her in disbelief.

Diana behind the eight ball.

Like Jackie, the whole drama is set over a very short period.  In this case, three days: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day 1991.  Princess Diana is obliged to join the Royal Family for the Christmas celebrations at Sandringham House.  At this stage, her relationship with her husband, The Prince of Wales, is irreperable.  She is now at breaking point.  

She arrives to find a newly appointed Royal Guard who has been charged with the task of helping to keep her in line.  She has a long friendship with the chef but her access to the kitchen is deemed inappropriate and limited.  Her handmaiden - the only person she feels she can confide in - is temporarily dismissed.  

Her own childhood home is not far away.  Crumbling and in disrepair it sits in the distance, enshrouded in fog.  She stares across the lawns at it.  Trying to claim something from her childhood she has taken a coat off a scarecrow which she had made as a child when she lived there.

Incidents happen which shock us at first, only to realise they are her imaginings as she eats her own pearls and falls down the stairs and is visited by the ghost of Anne Boleyn.

The tension at times is extraodinary.  In a conflict with her husband over a billiard table she handles a ball like a weapon to be released as her anger builds.

Most distressing for her is the feeling that "tradition" is driving a wedge between herself and her two boys, William and Harry. 

The oppresive demands of being a Royal, the awful sense of being a captive is overwhelming her. The film is not hard on the Royal Family.  Their situation is just as difficult as hers.  Something that is regularly pointed out to to Diana.

If you're looking for a re-enactment of events you'll be dissapointed. Many of the powerfully dramatic incidents in ths film simply did not happen.  And many of the people in this bio probably did not exist, nor did they have the relationship with Princess Diana that this film suggests.  But it does not matter.  In a way a greater truth is revealed.