Movie Reviews: Diana

Set during the last two years of the life of the former Princess of Wales, Diana (12A) stars Naomi Watts in the eponymous role, playing a woman who is struggling to define her post-royal family position, maintain a relationship with her sons, and find the love that has eluded her.

The film opens with Diana watching a TV programme in which Prince Charles is grilled about his alleged infidelity during their marriage, although Diana’s own alleged infidelities are glaringly noticeable in their absence.

Pottering about Kensington Palace, making baked beans on toast for tea, Diana is a lonely, beautiful princess who has been terribly wronged. When she meets heart surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews), Diana believes she has found true love at last — but will the world at large, and the paparazzi press in particular, leave her in peace to live her life? A very fine actress, Naomi Watts is given very little character to play with in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s hagiography. The story here cleaves very firmly to the perception that Diana was flawed only in terms of her inability to play the part expected of her by the Windsors, and that she was undone only by her passion for life and love. That theory is undermined by surprisingly muted performances from Watts and Andrews, the cheesy, well-worn dialogue, and the stilted retelling of a tale we all know only too well from a thousand tabloid headlines.