Film review: The Princess lifts the curtain on England

The film shows us the inner strength Diana always had. Photo / Supplied

The Princess (109 mins)
Directed by Ed Perkins
Reviewed by Jen Shieff

The Princess is an unusually frank, surprisingly unsentimental insight into Princess Diana's life, a different take from any other fictional or documentary accounts of her. If you think The Princess is nothing new, same old, you'd be wrong. It will likely soften even Diana's harshest critics and grip the most jaded of viewers.

Until now, Diana has been seen as the one chosen for her suitability to bear the heir to the throne, who turned out to have star quality as soon as she put on that engagement ring, a shy person, mostly shunning the spotlight, sometimes appearing to seek it. Ed Perkins' film glosses over those familiar aspects of her, showing us instead the inner strength she always had and how time has changed not only the way we understand her as a person, but also her impact on the monarchy and on society.

Without a huge budget or a big crew, with only actual footage and clever editing by Jinx Godfrey and Daniel Lapira, Ed Perkins shows an intelligent Diana, insightful from the beginning, with a lot more depth than Charles.

It's fascinating to see ordinary people and hear their voices, in ordinary places, like the supermarket, when Diana news started to accumulate. Through those clips and through the telephoto lenses of many, many cameras, we see that it was her audience who created one of the most recognised people in the world. Intrigued, they couldn't get enough of her.

Ed Perkins briefly slots in that famous interview, where Diana says there were three people in the marriage and admits to falling in love with James Hewitt. It seems at this point that Ed Perkins is challenging us. Do we think Diana is being a self-indulgent brat, or pleading for help, and more than that, did our fascination with her celebrity make us somehow complicit in her tragic end?

Refreshingly, there's no voice-over commentary, none of those nosey parker royal biographers or pompous historians, not even any explanation of who Dodi was, except that there's an image of Harrods and a member of the public says Diana would need a billionaire to give her the life she'd been used to.

All voices are those recorded along with the original footage, on the spot. It's more vivid that way. An unnamed reporter on the night of Diana's death refers to the BBC's night-time viewing numbers usually being 800,000, suddenly swelling to eight million, and asks us to imagine all the kettles that were being switched on to make tea.

Ed Perkins lifts the curtain on England, at the moment it switches on all those kettles. It's England giving itself permission to go ahead and let it all out for once. The country was not only grieving for Diana. It was girding its loins, about to give the royal family the shake-up of the century.

Highly recommended
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