The Princess

“Peti­tion for the canon­i­sa­tion of Lady Di?” lies Amelie, as she knocks on doors in her Tech­ni­col­or world, far from the sun-bleached cor­ner shop win­dow of this doc­u­men­tary. But the Princess may as well be Saint Diana – enshrined in pop cul­ture and able to tran­scend any crit­i­cism lev­elled at her.

Ed Perkins’ The Princess cracks the eggshell of that baf­fling mag­net­ism – this was a per­son who, as one embit­tered reporter remarks with­in the film, ​“Called a press con­fer­ence to tell peo­ple to leave her alone.” But for all her priv­i­lege, this doc­u­men­tary shows that The People’s Princess was capa­ble of hav­ing real human facial expres­sions, kept some gran­ules of spon­tane­ity despite the rigid­i­ty demand­ed by her role, and real­ly did throw a span­ner in the roy­al works. She shift­ed the state of the roy­al­ty from stag­na­tion to entropy. Occa­sion­al­ly, she even drove her own car. She was unques­tion­ably significant.

The Princess charts Diana’s pub­lic life from doe-eyed ingénue to divorced pil­lar of idol­a­try, con­tro­ver­sy and phil­an­thropy. It also doc­u­ments the mass grief unleashed by the F Scott Fitzger­ald-tragedy of her death. The film has no new inter­views or nar­ra­tion. It presents a panoram­ic, non-judge­men­tal col­lage of con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous footage, of the sub­ject and her new fam, but also, of the reporters who fol­lowed them around and the pub­lic who mor­bid­ly con­sumed morsel thrown to them.

A sense of the era, when paparazzi were par­tic­u­lar­ly hun­gry and the monar­chy was los­ing its mojo, is vis­cer­al­ly evoked with nei­ther nos­tal­gia nor scorn. The weird, washed-out palette of the ​’80s and ​’90s (did it real­ly look like that? No one remem­bers) speaks for itself, through vox pops con­duct­ed in hair­dressers full of ordi­nary women aping the Princess’ hedge­hog-hair, the fags dan­gling from mouths in pubs, and the BBC Eng­lish still spo­ken with­out irony.

The lay­er­ing of mate­r­i­al is done care­ful­ly, with nar­ra­tive embed­ded with­in the images. Charles and Diana’s doomed mar­riage moves through time and news­pa­per head­lines with the clunky waltz of a forced fairy tale. The supreme dis­com­fort of it all is squirm-induc­ing. Both are trapped by cir­cum­stance – the film acknowl­edges the sad­ness of these liv­ing anachro­nisms, exist­ing with the con­stant pres­ence of their own image reflect­ed at them, while also show­ing the sick­en­ing lux­u­ry they inhab­it. As such, empa­thy is clev­er­ly mediated.

Diana’s dis­as­trous attempt to exist as a mod­ern per­son in an ancient sys­tem expos­es the flick­er­ing obso­les­cence of the monar­chy. Through­out the doc­u­men­tary, press cov­er­age is manip­u­lat­ed, biogra­phies hit the shelves and exclu­sive inter­views are dished out.

The film shows the Roy­als being repeat­ed­ly accused of becom­ing no more than a branch of the enter­tain­ment indus­try – such crit­i­cisms now fol­low their next gen­er­a­tion. But as this string of footage sug­gests, the monar­chy is pure enter­tain­ment. They func­tion as a con­duit for pub­lic cathar­sis – yet Diana offered some­thing more per­son­al, more dra­mat­ic to the British Roy­al saga.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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