Starring: Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, Frank Langella
In 1956, movie star Grace Kelly (Kidman) made headlines around the world by marrying Prince Rainier (Roth) of Monaco. Dedicating her time from then on to public functions and charitable works, Grace is however tempted back into Hollywood when director Alfred Hitchcock (Roger Ashton-Griffiths), offers her the lead in Marnie. Grace is tempted back towards the silver screen but when tax problems threaten Monaco to become a part of France, Grace is torn between returning to the movies and supporting her subjects.
Last year, Oliver Hirschbiegel was roundly denounced following the release of Diana, take on a romantic affair of Princess Diana. Whilst I personally thought the film was flawed, I perhaps gave it a softer and kinder review than many other critics. What little goodwill could be bestowed upon Diana for this story of a glamorous and beloved European princess who dies tragically in a car crash, I feel less sympathy.
The thing is, the film understands the glamourous aspects of Grace Kelly's story. It's a film of the glamorous highlife of Monaco, society balls and the upper financial echelons of society. A film that sees status but not character or spirit. The film shines but it's aesthetically rather unattractive because of this lack of atmosphere. Like an extremely contrived advert for a brand of chocolate, it knows how to push buttons to suggest class but it's all just soulless set dressing. It's odd that the film is so dramatically dead given the calibre of the cast. Nicole Kidman plays Grace Kelly, an odd and not particularly successful casting choice beyond bringing glamour to proceedings. Tim Roth plays Prince Rainier but does little more than sit and smoke, occasionally raising his voice a little. Frank Langella seems equally bereft of material or direction whilst Robert Lindsay plays Aristotle Onassis with a performance and Greek accent as thick as feta.
Indeed, throughout the film we're treated to a completely inconsistent approach to accents that makes it so easy to lose track of the characters and their backgrounds as the film seems to scramble for some unifying idea of what it's about. It is, by its own admission, a fanciful take on the true story. The thing is it doesn't really know what it wants to be fanciful about. Is it a story of Monegasque independence, a story of a woman not knowing her place in a strange world (even though, despite the claims of Langella's priest, it isn't too far removed from Grace's America, relatively speaking) or about a woman, famed for her glamour and poise, supposedly learning those things from a cameoing Derek Jacobi?
It doesn't help that the film also spoon feeds its audience what tidbits of exposition it can with toe-curlingly artificial dialogue that doesn't ring true and only serves to remind an audience of the time and place. This is harshest in the early going when Hitchcock rabbits on about Cubby Broccoli making spy movies with some Scotsman (hmmmm...I wonder what that is?) and occasionally going off to talk about The Birds (1963). For such an assemblage of talent, it's a shame that this film comes off as it does and I don't like seeing movies (even movies I don't like) doing poorly at the box office like this is doing but with a film that is as trite, confused, artificial and often damn patronising as Grace Of Monaco, I find little room to wonder why this has happened.
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