Actress Kristen Stewart is raising eyebrows for her portrayal of the much-beloved Princess Diana in Spencer, as a swearing, masturbating, manic mess who was “desperate for connection” and felt isolated and lonely as a British royal.
The Los Angeles-born Stewart portrays Lady Di in Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s Spencer, which debuted at the Venice Film Festival on Friday. Diana’s life is doled out as a tragic fairy tale fable in reverse. Or as a reviewer for the Independent says, the film portrays Diana “as a martyr in Sloane Ranger clothing, a modern-day equivalent to the doomed Anne Boleyn.”
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In one scene, for instance, Stewart brushes off her dresser by saying, “Now leave me, I want to masturbate.” And the film also explicitly shows Lady Di engaging in an eating disorder and is shown both throwing up and self-harming.
Still, Stewart insists “there’s nothing salacious about our intention” with the film’s portrayal of a swearing and masturbating Princess Di.
Speaking at the Venice Film Festival on Friday ahead of the premiere of her film, Spencer, the Los Angles-born actress said that the Princess of Wales had an “undeniable penetrating energy,” Yahoo News reported. “I think the idea of somebody being so desperate for connection and somebody who’s able to make other people feel so good, feeling so bad on the inside, and being so generous with her energy.”
“I look at her, the pictures and fleeting video clips, and I feel the ground shakes and you don’t know what’s going to happen,” she explained. “I just think that we haven’t had very many of those people throughout history. She really sticks out as a sparkly house on fire,” Stewart continued adding that Diana Frances Spencer felt isolated and lonely as a royal.
“Everyone feels like they know her. That’s what’s beautiful about her, that she’s accessible. You feel like you’re friends with her, like she was your mother,” Stewart exclaimed. “But ironically she was the most unknowable person.”
Despite the questions about the film’s look at “the people’s princess,” critics gave Stewart high praise for her portrayal of the title character after the film’s showing in Venice. Stewart, who has often been a target of disdain from critics, was praised for “nailing” Princess Di’s persona, shining a serious light on the royal’s inner turmoil and loneliness, and giving an “extraordinary fuck you to the royal family.”
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