At the very beginning of Spencer, the audience is put on notice: “A fable from a true tragedy.”

Pablo Larrain, who directed the movie, and Stephen Knight, who wrote it, were letting us know at the outset that the film is fictional, not factual, but don’t worry,  it is tragic.

I always get nervous when a director feels the need to explain what the movie is about rather than trust us to figure it out.

This haunting movie was a disappointment to me; I was looking forward to it, I’ve always been intrigued by the story of Diana Spencer. I never imagined that the story of Diana Spencer could be tiresome, this movie managed to do it.

Unfortunately, they forgot the fable and gave us 120 minutes of unrelieved tragedy.

This is a movie, and it has no obligation to be a truthful documentary.

Still, there was no need to demean Princess Diana by turning her into a helpless and delusional adolescent, a bolemic who ran into the bathroom to throw up just about every time she came near a member of the British Royal family.

Bolemia is a serious and sometimes fatal disease.

It is an emotional disorder that involves the distortion of one’s body image, and an obsessive desire to lose weight, in which bouts of overeating a large quantity of food is consumed in a short period of time, often followed by extreme feelings of guilt and shame and by episodes of vomiting.

In some cases, the victim is eventually unable to keep food down and literally starves.

In the movie, no one except Prince Charles mentions the disease, which is central to Diana’s tragedy. The family seems to have no idea she is critically ill. Are they that oblivious?

I will give the movie credit for one thing: it ended in the right way, and that was no small feat.

The only thing coming close to a bright spot in this movie is when Diana escapes with her sons – her real confidantes, which was a bit creepy – to get away from the haunted castle (as she wanders the royal halls and falls apart in her bedroom, and talks to Anne Boleyn,( the Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, until she was beheaded by her husband King Henry VII to make room for his mistress).

Queen Boleyn is sympathetic. She understands. I’ll bet she does.  But she was beheaded. Diana was ignored.

In linking Diana, who died in a car crash, with Anne Boleyn, who was murdered by her ruthless husband, Barrain is just beating us over the head with the idea of Diana as a totally helpless and innocent victim of heartless murderers. For me, that was making a complex tragedy into a heinous crime.

It felt over the top.

Diana asks a Royal Family employee if the family is going to kill her for being late and difficult. In Barrain’s movie, the family, a sort of humorless Adams Family of Wooden Indians, doesn’t seem to have the energy even to speak, let alone arrange the killing of a princess.

Prince Philip, who was critical in forming the family’s response to Diana, didn’t have a single speaking line.

I follow the British Royal Family; they are, to me, the best running soap opera in the world.

This Diana is a pathetic version of the real one, who was persecuted, mistreated, ignored, and yes, ultimately tragic. She was also charismatic, intelligent, powerful, and a master manipulator of the media in England, whose reporters she charmed and manipulated when it suited her.

She leaked all kinds of nasty stories to the press during and after her quarrel with Prince Charles.

The real significance of Diana was that she revealed the inhumanity and rigidity of the royal family, which could really use some genuine change. They just never could figure out how to help her or bothered to try. And they seem, in the movie and in real life, as emotionally constipated and outdated.

But this Diana was hard to watch. Diana’s bohemia was gut-wrenching.

It’s hard to imagine the royal family and their bevy of house doctors didn’t know what was happening in medical terms, but instead, Diane is portrayed mostly as an indulged  and erratic lunatic.

I missed at least some discussion of this dread disease or a word about how she felt about it.

Barrain decided Diana was so fascinating he didn’t need to give any of the other actors much to say or do.

Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) was a cowardly miserable stone face, the movie’s Queen Elizabeth (Stella Gonet) said about three words. She did glower menacingly whenever Diana (Kristin Stewart) came near her or entered a room.

She made it clear that Princess Diana was not worthy of speaking to.

The Royal Family staff was mysterious, gloomy, and prone to spying and pleading politely. The one exception was Maggie (Sally Hawkins), a helper who tried to support Diana but was continuously sent back to London by Charles.  She went back and forth so many times I got dizzy.

She was the only person in the movie apart from Harry and William who loved Diane Spencer at all.

Anne Boleyn was loyal, she did hang around.

Maggie told Diana to be strong, like telling Charles Mansion to be sweet.

On the other hand, Stewart was in every scene of the movie and cried in every single scene, except when she ordered fried chicken at a fast-food franchise in London. That seemed to cure everything, at least for a bit.

Nobody gives the Royal Family any points for warmth, the ability to change, or empathy or compassion for Diana or anyone else.

 

 

But this movie, set around a Christmas weekend, turned them into a creepy horror show, which they don’t deserve either. We know by now that no matter how glamorous it seems, being a royal is not fun or easy.

There was absolutely nothing to balance the wrenching, disintegrating, sobing, and Diana with any of the players in her life. Throughout the movie, I wondered why she didn’t just flee the weekend and stop getting sick.

Charles ran into her once in the vast castle, it was near a pool table – the only time they spoke much during the two-hour movie – and he told her she had to be two people, the real one and the one the photographers take pictures of.

It was one of the most gripping scenes in the movie, and Barrain ran right over it.

She responded by gripping a pool ball and dropping it on the floor, then crying. She never bothered to answer him. They were, of course, sleeping in separate bedrooms.

The movie didn’t portray the family as evil enough to warrant this portrayal; we didn’t see them as being good in any meaningful way. We didn’t see them at all, really, except when they were sitting around waiting for Diana to show up for dinner.

The functions of Diana’s many watchers, dressers, and attenders were to knock on the door, remind her that she was late (she was always late), offer to help he dress (she mostly declined), and leave reluctantly.

The scene was replayed as often as Diana cried and dressed for lunch, breakfast, or dinner, which was always.

Charle’s famed infidelity was never mentioned directly, but his true love did show up at church to stare at Diane and trigger a panic attack. Diana was furious when she realized he had given her and his true love the same pearls.

The film didn’t work as a fully-fleshed movie. The story and the tragedy of Princess Diana deserved better, even as fiction. It was a Herculean performance by Kristin Stewart, but the story didn’t give her a chance to do much but cry and go to pieces.

Barrain’s gamble was to see Diana as tragic as being so powerful a story; he didn’t bother to flesh it out or give us a reason to take sides in one of the world’s most famous and ugly family feuds.

I can’t recommend it. But you might wish to see it for yourself; the settings are beautiful, the cinematography stirring. And your review is as good as mine.

(The sore ass rating was four of five. It’s a long movie. Your butt may hurt, mine did.)