The film (for the those of you that haven't been following it) has faced an uphill battle ever since the project had been finished. Distributor and awards season magnet Harvey Weinstein and the film's director argued intensely over the final cut of the film. Weinstein wanted the film to focus more on Grace Kelly's desire to return to Hollywood, and the struggle of living a life of royalty. Dehan has been very vocal about this particular cut of the film, saying it is "catastrophic" and "a pile of shit". Dehan's cut was the version that opened the festival early this morning, and while he has publicly voiced his concerns about protecting his artistic vision of the film, it seems like that may just be the film's biggest problem.
TIME magazine's Richard Corliss writes that Grace of Monaco is:
"Often silly but never vivacious... fails as either a stately drama or a BBC provenance or an entertainingly trashy tell-all. Arash Amel's screenplay is replete with international politics (Charles de Gaulle's blockade of Monaco as a tax haven for the wealthy French) and political intrigue (someone on the inside is conniving with the French president), but the film is short of either insight or juice."
The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Dalton entitled his review of the film "Grace of Monaco: A Stiff, stagey, thuddingly earnest affair that has generated far more drama offscreen than on."
The only positive things the film has been attracting, seems to be for the costumes (which were always going to be the highlight, as evident from the trailer) and (mostly) for Kidman's performance. Of Kidman, many feel that she's committed, but inappropriate for the part. Hitflix's Guy Lodge has this to say of the Oscar winner:
"... Nicole Kidman, whose brittle, committed performance frequently seems as an afterthought amid her director's whirring assemblage of arbitrary cut, close-ups and a crazed score that treats every scene as a climax; if he instructed her at all, it was with sporadic, barking interjections from spoken-word breakdown of "Vogue." Porcelain goddess credentials aside, Kidman's not an especially logical choice to play Grace Kelly- she's a nervily intuitive performer where Kelly was a malleably obliging one, a contrast never more obvious than in one contrived scene that sees her privately rehearsing scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's 'Marnie' in a shrill register that resembles neither star's customary style."
Needless to say, it doesn't seem as if the film (once poised as one of Harvey Weinstein's biggest Oscar contenders for this year) will have much play in the coming awards season. Though Cannes isn't the be all end all of awards talk (remember Nebraska's tepid reception last year?), when it's this bad, it's safe to say that there's no chance of recovery. Weinstein himself apparently "skipped" the premiere.
Though off to a shaky start, we still have a lot to look forward to; Foxcatcher, The Homesman, and all of the other buzzy titles (which you can see here on the festival lineup) have yet to premiere. As for Kidman, kudos to her for taking on an unorthodox take on a familiar story (as she always does, though some of her work is divisive, she is always interesting as an actress), but here's to hoping her next project fares a bit better.
Grace of Monaco's US release date is till TBD.
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