Oy vey! The dreary and unintentionally absurd
Diana stars Naomi Watts as the People's Princess and chronicles the last two years of her life. Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (who ventured into similar terrain with the Academy Award nominated
Downfall about the waning years of Adolph Hitler) and scripted by Stephen Jeffries,
Diana is a miscalculation from the start, with its made-for-trashy-television approach and unsubtle staging of the demise of one of the most beguiling and enigmatic creatures of the twentieth century. The film begins with Diana dithering about in her Parisian hotel room, a sense of dread swells the soundtrack, as if she knew. Well we know whats about to happen; it was one of the most historic events of the last thirty years. As she careens down the hotel corridors, she stops, the camera stops to look back. It's meant to be an artistic moment of reflection, but the effect is simply ridiculous. Oh the foreboding!
Yet this is a love story, and the title cards bring us back two years earlier to another confusing part of the Princess Diana puzzle, just before the divorce heard round the world from Prince Charles became final and the world was as enraptured to the dramatics of the royal family in a more singularly trashy way. Aware her marriage is but up, but in no position to call it officially kaput, the film posits that Diana had one last shot at happiness and romance with a dapper Pakistani heart surgeon named Hasnat Khan (played by
Lost actor Naveen Andrews.) The two meet cute in a traditionally Hollywood moment at a hospital when a friend of the late princess falls ill and a grand romance develops.
