This latest English-language drama from Chilean director Pablo Larraín is an artful companion piece to his earlier 'Jackie.'
Stewart electrified the camera’s gaze even as she seemed to deflect it. Her flinty naturalism took on a paradoxical radiance.
In “Spencer,” she achieves an equally remarkable alchemy through radically different means. Those means might look conventional on the surface: a blond wig, a British accent and an array of actorly mannerisms — hushed, breathy intonations, nervously darting eye movements — that are a little jarring on first encounter. But by the time Diana arrives at Sandringham, where she retreats to her chambers and shows little intention of emerging, the illusion has eerily seized hold.
What gives Stewart’s performance its specific resonance goes far beyond adroit technique; it’s the sense of a spiritual kinship, unarticulated but unmistakable, forged by an actor who knows a thing or two about the trappings of fame and the cruel churn of the gossip mill.
Her discomfort is exacerbated at every turn by Larraín’s filmmaking, which often employs the feverish language of psychological horror — and more than a whisper of camp — to conjure a mood of relentless extremity. The camera, wielded by the great cinematographer Claire Mathon , chases Diana down corridors and stalks her around her chambers where she seethes and despairs. The music shudders with all the raw-nerves lyricism you’d expect from Jonny Greenwood .
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