Kris­ten Stew­art makes a run for it as Lady Di in the Spencer trailer

With the fall film fes­ti­vals either wrapped up or soon to be, the ever-length­en­ing Oscar prog­nos­ti­ca­tion sea­son has offi­cial­ly begun. With so many major titles still yet to be seen, there’s not much to bank on at present, with one sig­nif­i­cant excep­tion: Kris­ten Stew­art​’s wide­ly praised per­for­mance as Princess Diana in Pablo Lar­raín​’s lat­est fea­ture Spencer.

Today, the gen­er­al pub­lic got a taste of what’s posi­tioned Stew­art as a fron­trun­ner with the full trail­er for the upcom­ing film, which shows her Lady Di run­ning the emo­tion­al gamut. Also, just plain run­ning – a dash across the grounds of the San­dring­ham Estate, haute cou­ture be damned, forms the cli­max of the clip below.

We join an unrav­el­ing Diana around Christ­mas in 1991, with her mar­riage to Prince Charles (Jack Far­thing) in its death throes and media atten­tion bear­ing down on her slight shoul­ders heav­ier than ever. Despite the sup­port of her right-hand woman Mag­gie (Sal­ly Hawkins), she’s appre­hen­sive about sev­er­ing ties with a pow­er­ful fam­i­ly, their influ­ence wield­ed in a rather sin­is­ter man­ner by the Equer­ry Major Gre­go­ry (Tim­o­thy Spall).

In his review out of the pre­mière at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val, man-on-the-scene David Jenk­ins wasn’t so tak­en with the film, describ­ing the writ­ing as ​“often wit­less and banal, leav­ing Lar­raín and the actors to hero­ical­ly milk the dra­ma from a string of inter­ac­tions that are either over­stuffed with ​‘mean­ing,’ or just death­ly dull.” He went on to add that ​“the film oper­ates as if it has stum­bled onto box-fresh insights, which in turn leaves you wait­ing to dis­cov­er what the real take is. And it nev­er comes.”

Even with the notices on the more mixed side of pos­i­tive, Spencer has already com­mand­ed a lot of atten­tion and assert­ed itself as a key piece of the year’s remain­ing movie cal­en­dar. Stew­art has worked with world-renowned auteurs and earned crit­i­cal esteem from even the most skep­ti­cal cor­ners; an Oscar is the last cap-feath­er still elud­ing her, for who knows how much longer.

Spencer comes to cin­e­mas in the UK and US on 5 November.