Starring as Princess Diana in this uniquely unsettling film, Kristen Stewart delivers a performance that places her front and centre of the Oscar race.
Spencer chronicles three tumultuous days in Diana's life in December 1991 when her marriage to Prince Charles was suffering considerable strain and reaching breaking point.
Diana arrives alone at the Queen's Sandringham Estate in Norfolk on Christmas Eve, and the distance between her and the in-laws is pronounced – they all but ignore her entirely. There is joy and laughter to be had with her young sons William and Harry, but otherwise Diana is extremely out of place amongst this bizarre family.
Spencer functions as something of a companion piece to Chilean director Pablo Larrain's 2016 film Jackie, which also centred around an iconic 20th-century figure who married into a famous family.
Here, Larrain places a focus on particular elements of the setting – there is a lot of business about food, and certain Sandringham staff members get more screen time than the royals.
A sinister tone permeates the whole affair to the point where this often feels more like a haunted house movie. Indeed, this is much more of a mood piece than a historical document, which helps separate it from the more melodramatic contemporaneous portrayals of these characters. Although it can be heavy-handed at times (there are dream sequences involving Anne Boleyn), Spencer elicits plenty of emotional responses, mostly via Stewart's extraordinary performance, on which the film rests entirely.
Stewart has never been a showy actor, and that lack of showiness has never felt like more of an advantage. This is a stillness and poise to her here that deserves awards recognition.
The film around her is sometimes inscrutable and obtuse, but that appears to be the point.
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Advertise with NZME.Cast: Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins
Director: Pablo Larraín
Running time: 116 minutes
Rating: M (Offensive language & self harm references)
Verdict: A bloodless horror movie about a messed-up family.
