London’s Ecosse Films has issued the first official still (above) of Naomi Watts as Diana, Princess of Wales, from the set of its movie about the last two years in the princess’s life. Originally titled “Caught in Flight,” as we reported on February 10, the movie has been renamed “Diana,” leaving no doubt whom it’s about.
Watts’s Mona Lisa smile in the photograph is redolent of an equanimity that Diana may or may not have found during her romances with the Pakistani heart and lung surgeon Hasnat Khan (who is being played by Naveen Andrews) and Dodi Fayed (Cas Anvar). The Daily Mail has suggested that her Côte d’Azur vacation with Fayed was the occasion when she was at “her most relaxed and calm”; however, the passionate affair with Khan is believed to be the ostensible subject of Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film. It remains to be seen how politically pointed it will be.
Certainly the image contrasts greatly with the damning TV news shot of Diana that was used in Stephen Frears’s 2006 “The Queen.” As I wrote in my review of the film, “In a brilliant editorial stroke, Frears cuts in a shot of Diana looking to the left with a hint of accusation in her eyes, whereupon we see a close-up of Elizabeth.”
The wig fetchingly worn by Watts, her beauty seemingly airbrushed to perfection, has meanwhile prompted Jasper Rees of theartsdesk.com to compare her Diana to another icon. “The portrait is not by Testino. Anyone else thinks she looks more like Tina Brown, the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, New Yorker, and, crucially, Diana’s biographer?”
The movie, which is being filmed in Mozambique and Croatia, also features Charles Edwards as Diana’s private secretary Patrick Jephson, Douglas Hodge, and Juliet Stevenson.
A boost to the production is the shelving of a documentary about Diana and Fayed’s deaths bankrolled by the latter’s father, the billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed. As reported in The Sun, the film, “Unlawful Killing,” directed by the actor Keith Allen, cannot be shown in theaters because “it failed to secure insurance to protect distributors against legal action.”
“Lawyers had warned there are 87 contentious allegations that would have to be cut before a British screening and although there were plans to release it in the US in August to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the deaths, the insurance was needed to protect the European offices of the distributors.”
“Unlawful Killing,” which was promoted by Allen in Cannes last year, as recorded in The Guardian, explores the conspiracy theory that Diana and Dodi Fayed were murdered at the behest of the British establishment. It has now been “withdrawn in perpetuity,” a spokesman said. “Diana,” though, will open in 2013.
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