Usually, when I watch a film, when it is clearly not my cup of tea, I switch off. The only reason this film gets a three out of ten rating is because, it truly is, mesmerizingly awful. You won't be able to look away, because: 1. There are some seriously good actors here, Tim Roth and Derek Jacobi, Geraldine Summerville, Robert Lyndsay and Nicole Kidman. So watching them all doing their best as it all goes from bad to worse is like watching a car crash. It must have looked so much more compelling in the script yes? 2. The half hearted attempt to make the film as a homage to films that Grace Kelly starred in. (See the nod and the wink when Nicole's Grace drives down the hill - 'To Catch a Thief') There is also the film stock used which is also reminiscent at particular moments of 1950s films. Also, the over wrought music score.
3. By the final penultimate scene when the character 'Grace' (sorry, but it just seems so rude to refer to this creation as Grace Kelly) makes a frankly mawkish and very average speech......you will be dumbstruck.......clearly, we, as the audience, are being poked and nudged to 'feel' great emotion over this moment, as if 'Grace' is making a speech on a par with Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech! Oh dear oh dear.
4. The entire narrative premise is dodgy - no matter how the script tries to hide it, this is basically a tale of a very wealthy principality, a tax haven no less, 'fighting the evil Republic' so they can maintain that position.
It is one of those films where you know you are supposed to be cheer leading for the main character, but it all comes across - to me anyway - as extremely forced. Having watched a few documentaries over the years about Grace Kelly, she sounds like a complex, down to earth woman, not the wispy character we see here.
Make your own mind up ladies and gentlemen, do give it a go, because as I say, it is mesmerizing, just not in the way the film makers hoped.
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