Grace of Monaco

Grace of Monaco shares some common ground with last year’s Diana biopic: it’s a melodrama of a woman very much in the public eye, there’s the crushing reality after a fairytale wedding, and both movies open with a long tracking shot of the fabulous world of the heroine, all the while keeping her face hidden. Also, like Diana, it’s a bad film.

Having left Hollywood five years before to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco (Roth), Grace Kelly (Kidman) is starting to feel the itch. Her very American directness rubs the well-to- do up the wrong way and, bored, her head is turned by Hitchcock who shows up looking to cast her in Marnie. Hubby Prince Rainier (Roth) initially encourages her return to the screen as he’s distracted by some argy-bargy with the tax-seeking De Gaulle but under political strain he’s told to take a ‘firmer hand’ in his marriage, as news of Grace’s comeback impedes French-Monegasque relations.

All Grace of Monaco had to do was to be better than Diana and while this stiff biopic is superior to that travesty the margin is only slim. The problem is it’s hard to deal with a princess and a fairytale in a manner that’s anyway realistic; a depiction of anything less than saintly, or the fairytale life is unachievable, and the filmmakers would be chased from the village with pitchforks. Prince Albert II, unhappy with how his parents were represented, refused to attend the Cannes premiere. One wonders what the issue actually was.

While straightjacketed into a hagiographic story, there are no excuses when it comes to the distracting framing with director Oliver Dahan giving us extreme close ups of Kidman’s eyes or obscuring Tim Roth’s face with the back of someone’s shoulder. The best scenes, where Frank Langella’s American priest, Grace’s friend and confident, explains to her that the fairytale doesn’t exist - ''real love is obligation'' - but any point he might have is lost in Kidman’s screen-filling irises.

It also doesn’t succeed in marrying this woman’s hopes and regrets - Did she do the right thing quitting Hollywood? Can she and Rainier reignite that passion? - with a West Wing- esque political chicanery brought on by a botched movie press release. These plot strands, and others, should tie together but everything feels separate from one another.

The performances are fine and it’s pretty to look at but…