One of the year's best film posters. (Image via Neon) Viewers of Spencer, the new biographical sketch of Princess Diana from auteur director Pablo Larraín, would be well-advised to take in his 2016 Jackie Kennedy work Jackie before sitting down for an expected A-to-Z biopic of one of recent history's most fascinating enigmas.
Larraín doesn't do biopics, though he does do challenging, painterly, psychologically pregnant portraits of women exceedingly well, as the intoxicating, at times maddening, Spencer proves.
Unfurling like a haunting, mental-health ghost story, Spencer reimagines a fraught few days for Diana over the 1991 Christmas holiday.