Lookout, Awards Season. Spencer is coming to dominate.
That’s the promise of the first trailer for director Pablo Larraín‘s biopic about a tumultuous holiday getaway for the British Royal family. It’s years into the marriage between Prince Charles and Princess Diana (Spencer), and at the moment their ill-fated union finally goes south once and for all.
Per distributor NEON’s official synopsis:
- “The marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles has long since grown cold. Though rumors of affairs and a divorce abound, peace is ordained for the Christmas festivities at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate. There’s eating and drinking, shooting and hunting. Diana knows the game. But this year, things will be profoundly different. Spencer is an imagining of what might have happened during those few fateful days.”
It’s a compelling window into the life of an iconic yet tragic international figure — and at a pivotal moment, much like Larraín’s 2016 Academy Award nominated portrait Jackie, which examined the grieving First Lady Jackie Kennedy (eerily, poignantly played by Natalie Portman) in the days following the assassination of President John Kennedy. That film broke the Oscar-bait rules of what we’ve come to expect from your standard biopic, crafting something more psychological and poetic.
Hoping for something similar here, and led by Kirsten Stewart as Diana Spencer, the hair and costume departments have served Stewart’s transformation well. In addition, the single two-word line we hear her speak at trailer’s end, Stewart not only seems to have nailed the British accent in general but she sounds almost exactly like Diana herself.
Written by screenwriter Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) and co-starring Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall, and Jack Farthing (Poldark) as Prince Charles, Spencer opens this fall exclusively in theaters on November 5, 2021.
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