‘ The Princess’ exposes public’s complicity in Diana’s destruction
AS WE head into the third week of Women’s Month, a must watch is The Princess. The HBO Original documentary is an intimate and immersive look at the life of Princess Diana.
Between The Crown, Kristen Stewart in Spencer and tabloid culture’s insatiable hunger for all things royal, viewers would be forgiven for thinking one more documentary about Princess Diana is gratuitous at best – or, being timed to the 25th anniversary of her death, morbidly opportunistic at worst.
But The Princess, Ed Perkins’s absorbing, thoughtful documentary, might be the film we’ve been waiting for all along.
Eschewing the usual conceits of talking heads, voice- overs and bio- fiction narrative tropes, Perkins simply assembles images from Diana’s life, entirely gleaned from archival footage.
Those clips – her fairy- tale courtship with Prince Charles, their “wedding of the century”, the ensuing troubled marriage and breakup, her transformation from fey English rose to paparazzi catnip and, finally, her martyrdom at the hands of the media she both hid from and masterfully manipulated – build into something sad, sobering and surprisingly profound.
Interrogating Diana as the “people’s princess” – a moniker that comes to have a discomfiting double meaning by the end of the film – Perkins’s essay becomes less about the mythologised icon of the title and more about celebrity, fandom and the public’s complicity in Diana’s misery and destruction.
The 109- minute film might be the most poignant depiction of a figure who will always remain just out of reach. It’s definitely the most on- point, even at its most obliquely damning.
Also new to streaming this week is Day Shift. Jamie Foxx plays Bud Jablonski, a humble pool cleaner who tends to the suburban homes of the San Fernando Valley, but whose true job is a vampire hunter. Bud’s kind of like an undercover cop.
The job entails numerous rules and regulations, several of which Bud has flouted, leading him to be kicked out of the union and go freelance. But the need to pay for braces for his 10- yearold daughter ( Zion Broadnax) sends him crawling back for forgiveness – and the higher premium paid by the union for vampire teeth.
This leads Bud to be assigned a babysitter in the form of a nerdy union accountant ( Dave Franco). It’s the set- up of a buddy- cop comedy.
In Collide, the worlds of three couples – Ryan Phillippe and Kat Graham, Dylan Flashner and Aisha Dee, and Jim Gaffigan and Drea de Matteo – intersect explosively at a Los Angeles restaurant in this thriller.
In rom- com My Favorite Girlfriend, an eligible bachelor ( Tyler Johnson) discovers his charming new love interest has multiple personalities.
And Post Malone: Runaway is a concert- tour doccie about the Grammynominated rapper’s 37- date tour.