The Second Spring Film Club: Diana
Film Review by
Mitford Girl.
Alison Belch reviews Diana, for the Second Spring Film Club this week. Alison has a vast knowledge of Diana's life and times, and I'm hanging on her every critical word.
Naomi Watts nails the speech patterns and coquettish under-the-eyelashes flirtatiousness of Diana
By the time you read this, the film will be gone from the cinemas as I fear I'm the only person who enjoyed it. Not to worry, it'll make what is known in my family as 'a good DVD' and you may only have to wait a couple of months to rent it, perhaps in a brown paper cover, to spare your blushes , as quivering housewives ingested Fifty Shades of Grey, we're told.
I spent the first 15 minutes of Diana thinking that Naomi Watts' watery prettiness was inadequate to portray Diana's rangy attractiveness, and her Holywood emaciation distracted me, along with the skinny trousers and very high heels Diana never wore. I could win Mastermind with this stuff. My mother, three sisters and I 'followed' Diana with the fervour of Moonies, in books and magazines of the period. I remember a male friend with four sisters telling me they were concerned he had no one to 'follow' in Hello! magazine, so they bestowed Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden upon him. He had to keep up with her appearance and activities; at one point anorexia was rumoured but John knew when she had turned the corner and put on a bit of weight. Not the most exciting, thon Victoria and then she marries yer man in the Timmy Mallet specs who looked like a Geography teacher. John would've been miles better off with a Grimaldi. Or a Diana, of course, whose charisma was unquestionable.
Naomi Watts - fears of a ruined career are quite unfounded.
After a stilted beginning, including the four doomed passengers looking backwards into camera in the Paris Ritz corridors, with what Richmal Crompton called 'horrid meaning', Naomi Watts really starts to nail the speech patterns and coquettish under-the-eyelashes flirtatiousness Diana was said to employ with man, woman and child alike. It was quite fascinating. She really was brilliant, fears of a ruined career are quite unfounded, I think.
Other reviewers have complained of the woefully naive and lifeless dialogue, not I; I have the impression this is how the woman actually talked. Remember she didn't have a single O' level and lived in ivory towers of varying intensity, all of her life. I've always fondly believed that immaturity and a lack of introspection were the cornerstones of English nobility. Therefore, I found the jejune exchanges between Diana and Hasnat Khan perfectly in tune with my middle class prejudices. I also vastly enjoyed the many interior shots of KP and the lolling about on Dodi's yacht, offset by scenes in Hasnat's poky little flat. Blame a Presbyterian upbringing and of course, again, Hello! for that.
The supporting cast seemed to know they didn't much matter-just as it was in real life. Naveen Andrews, as Khan, compensated mainly by shouting, Geraldine James as 'Oonagh', a very possibly made-up therapist of unspecified provenance, relied upon her mad crinkly hair for what my mother calls 'effect'. Douglas Hodge, as Paul Burrell, could hardly keep his face straight. Understandable, really. This film is best left to the initiated: if you haven't performed years of hard labour with women's magazines and at least read Tina Brown's The Diana Chronicles (an absolute belter), you mightn't get the full benefit, so to speak. However, you can't fail to appreciate the ending- Hasnat Khan staring dumbly at that unforgettable carpet of bouquets outside KP, exchanging a look with the security guards who knew him and helplessly adding his lilies to the vast stockpile. Call me Ms Menopause, but here, I enjoyed a peri-weep.
Also by Alison Belch
