Talkie Tuesday: Grace of Monaco

"The idea of my life as a fairytale is itself a fairytale."

Hello everyone!

So allow me to admit a guilty pleasure. 

No, it's not Glee anymore, sadly.

My guilty pleasure are biographical movies, whether they're slightly fictionalized or completely realistic as they come, but I love a good movie based off a true story, and I can't really count how many I've seen so far, although I haven't liked all of them. This week and the next will be dedicated to those.

Tonight's movie is one of those that I watched back at the seaside in 2015 when I was really fed up with melting in the heat and withdrew into the air conditioned interior, where I could then lounge and doze to my heart's content.

And I do have to admit that I tried not to doze through some of this, unfortunately, as this particular movie ranks somewhere along the lines of 'could have been better' for me even if some will be vocal with their disagreements.

But Grace of Monaco just wasn't all that jazz.

The storyline roughly covers the years between 1959 and 1962 (although I'm not too sure of that, that's a VERY rough estimate in my opinion), and I'm actually not doing it justice when I say storyLINE.

Because it's storyLINES.

Number one, we have Grace adapting to life in Monaco and life as a princess, wife and mother, in which we see that her marriage to Rainier has hit the rocks a little bit, she's struggling with the language, the fashion choices, the fact that she can never act again. There's an exploration of her being offered 'Marnie' but she eventually turns it down in favour of remaining Princess Grace.

Number two is a spy plot that twists through everything; Madge, a lady-in-waiting, is suspected of being a spy, but she's actually an undercover agent and Rainier's sister and brother-in-law are the spies responsible for feeding information to France about Monaco. This is uncovered by Grace during the movie.

Number three, as a finishing touch, is De Gaulle's wish to add Monaco to France, which brings international players into the game and additional tension with both the spy plot and the relationship plot.

Obviously, Grace learns how to deal with the pressures, manages to patch things up with her husband, uncovers the spy plot, and goes ahead with a charity ball despite the French threats, but in doing so she actually makes a brilliant move as most notably the Americans mention that it would really be poor form for De Gaulle to bomb Princess Grace, which saves the day.

Whew.

Okay, in general, I would say the idea for the movie was sound enough.

BUT.

There was too much stuff going on.

Each plotline I explained above would have made for a very good hour and some minutes left to spare in a movie, and even two combined would have probably made for a good thing.

All three, however, resulted in very little time being spent with each, and when it was it was disjointed, and you couldn't follow closely, and just too much of everything was happening at the same time. My head is spinning just by reading the notes I made back then! And I wanted more Grace and Rainier, darn it.

It's a shame really, but one other thing I noticed was that there was a whole lot of close-ups to Nicole Kidman's eyes, which didn't really give me much to work on.

The actress is a good actress, obviously, but I didn't read what I probably should have from her eyes, and thus the purpose was defeated.

Basically, for me, the highlight of the movie was an unexpected appearance of Milo Ventimiglia, and he was in there for maybe fifteen minutes altogether, if that. So there you have it.

xx

*images and video not mine