In 1956, Oscar-winning actress Grace Kelly (Kidman) stunned the world by marrying Monaco's ruling Prince Rainier (Roth). Five years and two children later, Grace is offered a plum role by Alfred Hitchcock (Ashton-Griffiths) just as France makes ominous moves to force Monaco to pay taxes. With advice from her priest friend Tucker (Langella), Grace decides to support her husband in the crisis, helping to soothe ruffled political feathers while bolstering Monaco's monarchy and fending off the in-laws (Somerville and Farrell). But this means she may never act again.

Amel's script continually presents Grace's choices in the corniest ways possible, piling on the most obvious complications, indulging in red herrings and wallowing in tearful emotions that never quite ring true. But Kidman plays it for all she's worth, giving each scene a bristling sense of underlying tension, plus tiny shades of curiosity, sexuality and intelligence. She may give Grace a strangely breathy Marilyn Monroe voice, but there's steeliness in her eyes.

The characters around her are much less complicated. Roth looks utterly exhausted as the indecisive Rainier, who's cold one minute and twinkle-eyed the next. Langella is his usual warm, generous self, upstaged hilariously by Jacobi's more flamboyant turn as Grace's etiquette teacher. And Posey takes a page from Cloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein, playing Grace's assistant as a pinch-faced crone who's clearly up to something that will shake Europe's oldest monarchy to its core. Or maybe not.

Most of these elements are unintentionally amusing, partly because the central plotline about the political standoff is so relentlessly uninteresting. Even Grace seems bored with it, and decides to save Monaco with a big party. When she's not rescuing orphans, of course. Yes, without much actual history, the film plays out like wish-fulfilment: this is a fairy tale princess who's also a saint. But of course, as the film reminds us at the top, Grace Kelly actually said, "The idea of my life as a fairy tale is itself a fairy tale."

themes, language

2.Jun.14