Aubrey MaloneA film constantly on the verge of being interesting
Grace of Monaco (PG)
We live in an age of conspiracy theories. Elvis died from a karate chop to the head. John F. Kennedy was liquidated by the CIA. The Mafia saw off Marilyn Monroe. And so on.
Which is why, going in to this supposed biopic of Grace Kelly, I expected more of the same spirited speculation about the ill-fated actresses’ life and premature death.
Were we going to hear that Prince Rainier married her for her money, as was mooted in some biographies of her that I read? Or that she was arguing fiercely with her daughter Stephanie on that fateful day in 1982 when her car sped off the road in Monaco, killing her?
No, no, a thousand times no. What we get instead is just some tame gobbledygook about President de Gaulle stamping on the little principality in the early 1960s when it seemed to be getting ideas above its station. Can we be expected to care about this, even if it’s true, all these decades later?
A more interesting film would have concerned itself with the erstwhile Hollywood star’s disenchantment with the royal life, her boredom with the empty riches of her palatial residence, her yearning for the excitement of the celluloid life she left behind so impetuously.
We do get an element of this in the film’s early stages when Alfred Hitchcock tries to entice her back to the screen to make a film called Marnie, about a kleptomaniac. (Tippi Hedren eventually got the part, and Hitchcock made her life hell as a result.)
Prince Rainier forbade her return to Hollywood, I believe, because he didn’t want his wife playing a neurotic. This isn’t really gone into in the present film, nor is the rumour that he disapproved of Kelly’s completed films so much that he even refused to allow them be shown in the royal palace.
Faux pas
What we’re left with instead of such items of personal interest is a lot of inconsequential mumbo-jumbo about the political status of Monaco versus France. In fact the ‘climax’ of the movie features Princess Grace’s keynote address on this hugely yawnful topic, full of saccharine clichés.
Having said all that, Grace of Monaco isn’t a badly made film. It’s well directed, contrary to what you might have been reading in the papers, and Nicole Kidman is excellent as the actress-turned-princess. She’s not a perfect likeness for her but at times she comes very close, which is more than can be said for Tim Roth as Rainier.
Roth neither looks like the man he’s playing nor shares his girth, and he makes absolutely no attempt at a French accent, sounding instead like someone who’s just stepped out of RADA. This is just another astounding faux pas in a film that seems constantly on the verge of becoming interesting but never quite gets there.
I left the film scratching my head over why they bothered making it in the first place. It told me nothing I didn’t already know about the beleaguered princess and neither did it make anything but a cursory attempt to get inside her head as she left Hollywood for the poisoned chalice of her gilded cage on the Riviera.
Subsidiary roles are played by Frank Langella, Parker Posey and Derek Jacobi. The costumes are stupendous, as are the sets, but when all is said and done this is a film all dressed up with nowhere to go. It’s a bit like Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons without the danger.
** Fair