Larraín opens the film with an army cavalcade down a tree-lined road to Sandringham - heavy-duty preparations for the holiday.Īll of the royal trappings in “Spencer” are militaristic and, we gather, potentially fatal for Diana. “Other people’s madness.”īut it’s a while before Diana comes into contact with almost anyone. In “Spencer,” the family already has its knives out for Diana. Diana is aware by now of Charles’ affair with Camilla Parker Bowles this Christmas gathering was when she supposedly decided to end the marriage.

The year is 1991, six years before Diana’s death but at the height of her discord with the royal family. It is often like that in “Spencer,” penned with too often on-the-nose poignancy by Steven Knight (“Eastern Promises,” “Locke”). This image released by Neon shows Kristen Stewart in a scene from When she sneaks out at night and guards come upon her with flashlights, Diana tells them, “Say you saw a ghost.” “Spencer,” which opens in theaters Friday, is more like a ghost story - a dreamy, luxe version of “The Shining,” with the Overlook Hotel swapped for the Queen’s Sandringham Estate, where Princess Diana mostly wanders in isolation and suffocating unease. “Jackie” had the prickly edges of a psychological thriller and draped itself in the memories of a grieving past. Here, again, is an empathetic but arch character study (this time the jazzy score is by Jonny Greenwood) about persona and personhood in a 20th century cauldron of fame and tragedy. It, too, was an elegantly stylish movie with a captivating leading performance in Natalie Portman as Jaqueline Kennedy and a piercing, discordant score by Mica Levi.

It wasn’t so long ago that the Chilean director Larraín crafted another meditation of mythmaking in the similarly conceptual, “Jackie.”

So why is the rest of Pablo Larraín’s “Spencer” such a hollow exercise in high camp? The casting, with Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, is brilliant, and the ending, in a top-down convertible, is sublime.

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