Grace Of Monaco will open the 67th annual Cannes film festival despite ongoing controversy. / Grace of Monaco review: Cannes opens with a royal biopic worse than Diana.

Grace of Monaco review: Cannes opens with a royal biopic worse than Diana

Naomi Watts set the bar high with last year's Princess-Di disaster. But Nicole Kidman has outdone her: this Grace Kelly film, which kicks off Cannes 2014, is a breathtaking catastrophe

Peter Bradshaw

 The Guardian, Wednesday 14 May 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/14/grace-of-monaco-cannes-review-nicole-kidman

It's traditional for Cannes to start with something spectacular. This is certainly no exception. It is a film so awe-inspiringly wooden that it is basically a fire-risk. The cringe-factor is ionospherically high. A fleet of ambulances may have to be stationed outside the Palais to take tuxed audiences to hospital afterwards to have their toes uncurled under general anaesthetic.

Grace of Monaco is a stately and swooning homage to Princess Grace, formerly Grace Kelly, focusing on her alleged courage in keeping plucky little Monaco safe for tax-avoiding billionaires. This was during its supremely parochial and uninteresting 1962 face-off with Charles De Gaulle, who wanted to absorb the principality and its monies into France's national bosom. So can Grace, by finally sacrificing her movie career on the altar of this cockamamie Ruritanian state, and flaunting her martyred couture loveliness, win the respect of the Monégasque folk and even the grumpy old Général himself?

The resulting film about this fantastically boring crisis is like a 104-minute Chanel ad, only without the subtlety and depth. Princess Grace herself is played by Nicole Kidman, wafting around the Palace with dewy-eyed features and slightly parted lips which make her look like a grown-up Bambi after a couple of cocktails, suddenly remembering his mother's violent death in the forest.

It doesn't seem that long since we endured a horrendous biopic of Princess Diana, that other super-rich blonde pasionaria — played by Naomi Watts. As audiences reeled into the foyer after that, they comforted themselves with the thought that surely things couldn't get worse. Surely they wouldn't be forced to endure another badly acted, badly directed film about a wealthy and self-pitying royal?

How very wrong. I can now actually imagine a creepy science-fiction short story about someone going back to prehistoric days in a time machine, killing a tiny trilobite, and then coming to the present to find everything the same, only now it's Naomi Watts playing Grace and Nicole Kidman playing Diana.

The movie begins with a sketch of jowly and adorable old Alfred Hitchcock (Roger Ashton-Griffiths) coming to Monaco hoping to tempt Grace back to the movies, proffering a juicy leading role in his latest film, Marnie. Two recent dramas about Hitchcock's troubled life — one for cinema, a better one for TV — have in fact begun in approximately the same way, but then followed the troubled director back to the US. Here, we stay with Kidman's Grace, who is effectively confronted by a dilemma. Should she return to her selfish, shallow life in Hollywood or build a new shallow, selfish life in Monte Carlo?

And so the terrible mental turmoil begins. She pores over the script, late at night, in bed, with stylish reading glasses. During the day, she tries her darnedest to impress the wittering ladies of Monaco by entering into the spirit of charity galas and such. She worries about plotting against her at court. She consults her confidant, one Father Francis Tucker, a sorrowing priest who is evidently permitted the familiarity of calling her "Gracie", played with conviction by Frank Langella.

Then, in order to bone up on the history and culture of Monaco — and perhaps because the situation is not yet sufficiently gay — Grace consults a local nobleman, Count Fernando D'Aillieres, played by Derek Jacobi. He scampers about the hillsides, with Grace in tow, filling her in on all the tiresome details, while also presuming to give her tips on acting and deportment. (Surely as an Oscar-winning star she knows this stuff already?) Jacobi has a little fun with the part, although it needed Ian McKellen to come on, playing the Count's ageing houseboy.

But how about the people for whom it is all supposed to be about? Her, erm, husband and children? Well, the absolute indifference shown by Grace to her kids here is startling. And what of Prince Rainier himself, that fairy-tale prince for whom she gave it all up? He is played by Tim Roth, who gives a very cigarette-smoking, glasses-wearing, moustache-having performance. He is always leaning in his chair, leaning against door frames — looking through his glasses, and smoking. What is this remarkable head of state thinking about? As performed by Tim Roth, it looks like he is thinking about how much he regrets taking this appalling role, and how inadequate he considers his fee, whatever it is.

An interesting, complex film could be made about a talented woman who decides to make the best of being trapped in an imperfect marriage. But such a film would have to stop curtsying, and really think about its subject.

Confirmed: Nicole Kidman's Grace Of Monaco will open the 67th annual Cannes film festival despite ongoing controversy

By LILLIAN RADULOVA and ALISON BOSHOFF

PUBLISHED: 03:11 GMT, 11 May 2014 / http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2625394/Nicole-Kidmans-Grace-Of-Monaco-open-Cannes-film-festival.html

It has been slammed by the Palace of Monaco as a 'farce', and even its U.S. Hollywood distributor has threatened to dump it.

But, despite all the internal and external struggles, it has been confirmed that the controversial film about the life of Grace Kelly will not only be played at Cannes, but will also open the prestigious international film festival.

Grace Of Monaco, which features Australian actress Nicole Kidman in the lead role, will premiere on Wednesday.

There were doubts about the film being screened at all, and Kidman's happiness that her performance will finally see the light of day will no doubt be blunted by ongoing disputes and criticism of the film behind the scenes.

Hollywood movie mogul and the film's distributor Harvey Weinstein, a long-standing patron and friend of Kidman’s, was reportedly so unhappy with the film - as completed by French director Olivier Dahan - that he edited his own version to be released in the U.S.

 Arash Amel, one of the scriptwriters who was also a producer on the film, defended his work last week.

He said: ‘It was never about the truth in a literal way, it was about the interpretation of an icon. I think every country in the world will see this story a little bit differently. America and France are just the furthest apart on that spectrum.’

A deal was worked out so Weinstein could release his version in the U.S. while the director’s cut would come to French cinemas.

However, in January that fell apart when Weinstein put off an agreed March release date, saying the picture was ‘not ready’.

Soon after it was announced that Grace Of Monaco - the French version, approved by Dahan - was going to open the Cannes film festival.

Weinstein was furious and began trying to renegotiate his rights fee with the film’s financier. He wanted to pay £2million rather than £3million, citing broken promises on the part of the French filmmakers, and added costs incurred by the new cut.

Now, according to Nicole Kidman, there has been an 11th-hour compromise.

Meanwhile, Monaco’s royal family, the Grimaldis, have publicly criticised the film as fake and nonsense.

Kidman herself has expressed her empathy towards Princess Grace’s three children, who have spoken out against the film and claiming it is based on ‘erroneous and dubious historical references’.

The actress told the Daily Mail: ‘I know they’re upset. I would be, too, if it were my mother.

‘It’s a child’s job to protect their parent. In that regard, I get it. I get why the children are upset.

‘I can’t say much other than that I have great respect and regard for their mother. It’s not meant to be a biopic. I certainly did my best to honour everything that was real and truthful in it.'

But it is the film’s apparent suggestion that the marriage between Grace and her prince was deeply unhappy that has dismayed the Grimaldis, who have long been beset by scandal.

Last week Grace and Rainier’s children said the film was completely fictional and did not accurately portray events involving their mother.

They were not given a script to approve in advance, and saw it only after it was lodged with the Hollywood Writers’ Guild.

The Monaco royal family’s statement said: ‘The Prince’s Palace would like to reiterate that this feature film cannot under any circumstances be classified as a biopic. The trailer appears to be a farce and confirms the totally fictional nature of this film.

‘It reinforces the certainty, left after reading the script, that this production, a page of the Principality’s history, is based on erroneous and dubious historical references.

‘The Princely Family does not in any way wish to be associated with this film which reflects no reality and regrets that its history has been misappropriated for purely commercial purposes.

Grace Kelly: screen goddess, princess and enduring source of scandal

Kelly's life was one of glamour, privilege and ultimately tragedy. Now, as Grace of Monaco, the biopic starring Nicole Kidman, opens the Cannes film festival, fresh controversy has stirred

Vanessa Thorpe, Observer arts and media correspondent

The Observer, Sunday 11 May 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/11/grace-kelly-grace-of-monaco-film-nicole-kidman-controversy

A blind date, you could call it, if a rather high-flown one. She was Grace Kelly, Oscar-winning Hollywood star, in Cannes to join the US delegation at the film festival of 1955, and he was Prince Rainier III, of the neighbouring principality of Monaco. A photoshoot of their meeting over a pot of tea on the Croisette had been set up. Despite the glamorous trappings, it was a stilted, formal start to a stilted, formal courtship.

On Wednesday the late, great beauty is to make waves on the beach at Cannes once again, when the new biopic starring Nicole Kidman, Grace of Monaco, opens the 67th annual film festival. It is a controversial film before the critics have had sight of it, because the Grimaldi family, Princess Grace's three children by Rainier, have poured scorn on the screenplay and because its powerful producer, Harvey Weinstein, is known to have criticised director Olivier Dahan's handling of the material. The film, which concentrates on a relatively short period in the life of the princess and co-stars Tim Roth as Rainier, was to have opened last November. In January, the Weinstein Company temporarily removed the film from its schedule.

Prince Albert and his sisters, Caroline and Stéphanie, are not expected to attend the gala premiere. Last year, after seeing a script, they claimed the film "contains important historical inaccuracies as well as scenes of pure fiction". Then, last Friday, the royal Monégasques alleged the film's trailer was farcical "and confirms the totally fictional nature of this film". Their statement read: "The princely family does not in any way wish to be associated with this film, which reflects no reality, and regrets that its history has been misappropriated for purely commercial purposes."

Whatever the motivation for making Grace of Monaco, the film reflects an enduring interest in a woman who, as the Observer's former critic Philip French said this weekend, became "an important and complex figure". When Hitchcock dreamed of his perfect, ice-cold blonde, it was Grace Kelly who made her luminous flesh. The director's infatuated vision of cut-crystal allure has kept the image of the princess alive in the 32 years since her death in a car crash near her Riviera home. Her performances in some of the most admired films of all time, from Fred Zinneman's 1952 western High Noon, to the unnerving Rear Window, placed her in the midst of Hollywood's most potent era. "She was important to the development of the legend of Hitchcock and, in those half a dozen films she made in five years or so in the early 1950s, she became a key figure in film; in film criticism; in the birth of the idea of celebrity; and even in politics," said French. "High Noon was a very influential film at the time of the cold war and of McCarthyism in Hollywood. People on the left and on the right became obsessed with it."

Sir Christopher Frayling, an expert on the western, sees Kelly's young school ma'am in this film as the archetypal "fair lady", in opposition to the "dark lady" of the saloon bar, played in this case by Katy Jurado. "Grace was the ultimate Wasp, remote and haughty and more New England than wild west," he said.

Kelly gave up acting when she married the prince in April 1956, becoming Monaco's princess consort in a church service watched by guests including Cary Grant, Ava Gardner and David Niven, and wearing a handsewn dress sent by MGM studios. The wedding was filmed and released in cinemas in a deal that freed her from a seven-year contract, and the couple sailed off on honeymoon on a yacht given to them by Aristotle Onassis. Her transformation from film star to royalty was made complete when Rainier banned her films in Monaco. The "wedding of the century" was satirically recorded in Punch, remembers French, with a poetic pastiche of Hilaire Belloc written by Graham Greene that pointed up the disconcerting involvement of Father Francis Tucker, her husband's chaplain and moral adviser (played by Frank Langella in the new film), which concludes:

Prince, you may draw your curtain close

And see your sentries on the stair,

Then lie down by the bride you chose,

But Father Tucker will be there.

Grace Patricia Kelly's story is far from a rags-to-riches fairytale. (That template better fits Rita Hayworth, who started out dancing in a nightclub as Margarita Cansino and became the wife of the Aga Khan.) She was the third child of a rich Philadelphia brick magnate and enjoyed a privileged upbringing that would go on to make her a natural for The Philadelphia Story, a play she appeared in at drama school before later taking the lead role of Tracy Lord in the musical version, High Society, her final Hollywood film, opposite Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.

Crosby, who sang the hit song True Love with her in High Society, has a place on her long list of great loves. Early on she had fallen for Gary Cooper, who handpicked her for stardom in High Noon. She would have an affair with Clark Gable while filming Mogambo, leading her to quip: "What else is there to do if you're alone in a tent in Africa with Clark Gable?" Later she told an interviewer that "if there hadn't been so much of an age discrepancy things might have been different".

Dishonourable mentions also reportedly go to married stars William Holden, Ray Milland, David Niven, Oleg Cassini, the husband of Gene Tierney, and even to Pierre Galante, Olivia de Havilland's husband and the man who set up her first meeting with Rainier in Cannes. Niven did nothing to dispel the image of Kelly as a sex enthusiast when he told Michael Parkinson about the dicey moment when Rainier asked him over dinner who had been his most exciting lover. Catching himself and changing his answer as he spoke, Niven replied: "Grac-ie Fields". Luckily, Rainier had never heard of the Lancashire singing star.

In 1954 Kelly won the lead role in the film of Clifford Odets's The Country Girl opposite Crosby and Holden. It was an unglamorous part as the neglected wife of an alcoholic, but her degradations earned her an Oscar, beating off Judy Garland, also nominated for A Star is Born.

It is likely that the new Dahan film focuses on the least exciting period of Kelly's life – a time when protocol overrode ambition. The storyline charts the political pressure the French government put on Rainier and Kelly's decision not to take the lead role in Hitchcock's Marnie, leaving the way open for newcomer Tippi Hedren to star.

Last week Kidman said she understood why Kelly's three children had spoken out against the film. "It's a child's job to protect their parent," she said. "In that regard, I get it. I get why the children are upset." She added: "It's not meant to be a biopic. I certainly did my best to honour everything that was real and truthful in it."

Kidman said she felt Kelly had to play the part of a princess. Adopting a new regal identity, she took up the charitable life, promoting the Red Cross with a starry annual ball in Monaco and hosting Christmas parties for local children. Yet she was always flanked by the press, as is shown in a poignant picture of her arriving at the Cannes film festival for a Hitchcock tribute two years before her death. "The freedom of the press works in such a way that there is not much freedom from it," she once said.

She died in a car accident on a dangerous coastal road in 1982, suffering a stroke and losing control of the vehicle, which spun and plunged down a 45ft drop. Younger daughter Princess Stéphanie was in the car but survived with minor injuries. The funeral of her mother was watched by 100 million people on television.

There is, of course, a fashion legacy, celebrated four years ago at the Victoria & Albert Museum in an exhibition, Grace Kelly: Style Icon. But more than the ubiquitous Hermès Kelly bags, and a "look" described by Women's Wear Daily in 1955 as "a fresh type of natural glamour", the actress's real achievement may be the careful transition from screen goddess to staid princess. She went convincingly from a co-star about whom Cary Grant once said: "With all due respect to Ingrid Bergman, I much preferred Grace. She had serenity," to an official and public Serene Highness.

Grace Kelly: her key roles

High Noon, 1952 Schoolteacher bride of principled marshal Gary Cooper

Mogambo, 1953 An ingénue in Africa with Clark Gable

Dial M for Murder, 1954 Deceived London wife of murderous Ray Milland

Rear Window, 1954 Polished lover of grumpy James Stewart

The Country Girl, 1954 Put-upon wife of alcoholic Bing Crosby (for which she won the best actress Oscar)

To Catch a Thief, 1955 Rich and headstrong pursuer of Cary Grant's retired cat burglar

High Society, 1956 Haughty heiress Tracy Lord