Kristen Stewart's Performance As Princess Diana In The New Spencer Film Receives Critical Acclaim.
Key Sentence:
- Kristen Stewart is "fiery," "loving," and even "beautiful" like Princess Diana, according to critics who saw Spencer's new biopic.
- The Twilight actress played the late princess at Sandringham for three days at Christmas 1991 before splitting from Prince Charles.
Telegraph reviewer Robbie Colin said he was "immediately and deserved to be rewarded for it." It was a "very crazy, sad and beautiful" film, he said.Spencer is directed by Pablo Larin, who previously led Natalie Portman to an Oscar nomination for Jackie for another highly researched community of women, Jacqueline Kennedy.
Director Pablo Larin with Kristen Stewart at the film's premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
The new film is "very bold, seductive, unhindered for filmmaking," adds five-star review Colin. Stewart "moves through this treacherous terrain with absolute mastery, getting the sound and manners just right, but zooming in on everything with just one step to better absorb the film's melodramatic, paranoid, and absurd aberrations," he wrote.
Deadline critic Pete Hammond said, "I can't say enough about Stewart's performance, which transitions from an improbable chronicle character impression to a beautiful understanding of her personality. "It's a cruel, bitter, touching, and utterly stunning twist that takes Diana down a path we've never seen in this compelling image."
Jonathan Romney of Screen Daily said his main look was "fragile, soft, sometimes playful and not a bit quirky." He wrote, "Stewart brought his charm to the role, and likely outlined his own story of battling obsessive fans and media attention." Kyle Buchanan of the New York Times agreed that casting Stewart seemed like a "meta-genius punch."
Hollywood Reporter David Rooney described the film as "a bold original" and Stewart as "excited" when "on the verge of hysteria from the start."
"He's nervous, fragile, often defensively aggressive, yet incredibly vulnerable in a film that takes him through psychological stress with overt hints of horror," he wrote. "This is a far cry from Netflix's more ornate treatment of The Crown." The Guardian's five-star review called it an "amazing" film and called the director's approach "rich and exhilarating and overall great."