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He has come to offer the newly-minted Serene Highness of Monaco the lead role in his next film, “Marnie”. For Grace, it’s a chance to revive a Hollywood career cut short at its zenith when she agreed to marry into the Grimaldi family and become a princess on a pile of rock in the south of France.
With eyes welling and a heart clearly yearning for the glamorous life that once was, she tells ‘Hitch’ she’ll think about it.
“Is everything alright Gracie,” Hitchcock asks as he stands to leave the gilt-adorned palace.
“Of course,” she replies, as much trying to convince herself as convince him. “Look at my life. It doesn’t get better than this.”
At its most basic, Grace of Monaco is about a woman who has given up her career for love. Marriage and children have stymied Grace’s own personal and career development: a common enough experience for women of all walks of life – this one just happens to also be a princess.
Set against the backdrop of an unfurling political crisis in her adopted country and a corresponding period of tension in her marriage to Prince Rainier, the film charts the evolution of Grace from a glamorous adornment on Rainier’s arm to a savvy political force to be reckoned with.
It’s My Fair Lady on the French Riviera. It’s Evita meets Monte Carlo. It is, above all else, a beautiful period film in which the costumes, the cars, the hair and the princess jewels dazzle in the Côte d’Azur sunshine.
There’s a hesitancy and a fragility to Nicole’s portrayal of Princess Grace which feels like a window on the woman herself. Certainly there are moments in the movie when you forget you are watching a film about Grace Kelly’s life and sense you are glimpsing the soul of Australia’s most famous actress. And strangely, instead of distracting from the film, it only enhances it.
During the opening scenes, the sentence: “The idea of my life as a fairy tale is itself a fairy tale” fades up on the screen, perfectly setting the tone.
For herein lies the dramatic crux of the movie. And it’s one that Nicole interprets with aplomb. Grace Kelly was a Hollywood star who was celebrated as one of the world’s most beautiful women, yet was wracked with self-doubt.
In one moving scene, Grace laments never having won the approval of her father, no matter how much she achieved in life. As a portrait of a woman frustrated by thwarted ambition, the film shines. It’s about life in a gilded cage and how the fantasy of being a princess bears no relation to the reality. It’s about how one woman’s choice of duty over desire saved a principality (and a marriage into the bargain), but at considerable personal cost.
French director Olivier Dahan does his level best to imbue the film with added drama by recreating the 1963 political stand-off between France’s then President Charles de Gaulle and the tiny principality of Monaco.
But it relies upon audiences investing in a little known dispute over the deeply unsexy issue of tax. And the problem is, no matter how much minor-key music you lay over the top of it, it’s hard to wring a whole lot of dramatic tension out of the subject of income tax.
To be fair, Monaco was reputedly brought to the brink by this crisis. Dahan’s challenge – and it’s hard to say whether he rises to it in this film – is to get audiences to care about the fate of a bunch of people who these days are mainly known for their proficiency at tax avoidance, Formula 1 Grand Prixs and casinos.
We’re asked to believe that Grace Kelly was to Monaco what Evita Peron was to Argentina. And while that may well have been the case – it’s Monaco. And sitting, gleaming as it does only 50 kilometres up the sparkling Côte d’Azur coastline from Cannes where this movie is opening the 67th Film Festival, it’s hard to summon the picture that Dahan wishes to paint of a population downtrodden and in despair.
Grace Kelly and Nicole Kidman.
Except for a few comically-rendered caricatures, the performances in the film are strong. Most notably, Nicole turns in a powerful performance as the actress-turned-princess with a identity crisis. She really looks like an actress at the height of her powers.
Frank Langella is a standout as the principality’s priest – the sage profferer of all wisdom to whom Grace flees whenever her existential crisis – or the crushing pressure of princess-dom – becomes too great.
Tim Roth’s Prince Rainier is at turns amiable and irascible. By day, he is seen trying to stave off war with France (though exactly how he plans to do that without an army is never really explained) while at night, he is seen to be at first encouraging and then forbidding his wife’s return to Hollywood.
By the end of the film, Rainier is reduced to a princess facilitator – meekly helping Grace devise her own diplomatic, and very-Hollywood solution to Monaco’s crisis. In fact watching Tim Roth’s commendable performance in the role, you can understand why Prince Albert and his royal sisters are upset. Their father comes across as controlling and unreasonable.
There are moments in which the director Dahan allows the film to veer too perilously close to outright mawkishness. Moments like the the penultimate scene when Grace is delivering a speech to a room full of international diplomats and heads of state and the saccharine-sentimentality goes off the scale. But for the most part, it’s finely balanced.
There is doubtless enough in ‘Grace of Monaco’ to make film snobs wail. Certainly, thefilm noirbrigade who haunt the Cannes Film Festival in their turtle necks and anoraks will have plenty to sneer about. But as a piece of crowd-pleasing, escapist cinema, the movie works well.
And finally, special mention must be reserved for the costumes, which are so stunning they are practically characters in and of themselves. From Grace’s poolside capri pants to her princess ball gowns, the Dior-inspired wardrobe is worth the price of admission alone.
