Grace of Monaco

The film ends up a hagiographic bundle of confusion - the usual trap that biopics often fall into. That's sad, given the enigmatic character it set out to portray. Grace Of Monaco is a cold and beautiful saga.

...too obsessed with being a fairytale to really become anything more than a pretty sheet of shiny wrapping paper twisted around a piece of wood-hard, flavourless candy. It is as beautiful as its subject, but amounts to be little else.

With a story that is all over the place, it is not clear what exactly the director was trying to portray. From personal crisis to political problems and conspiracies to charity, it oscillates like an old grandfather clock.

Finally, if one were to see the film as a piece of fiction rather than a document of history, Grace of Monaco is a story well told, and engagingly so. It has breathtaking visuals and lovely people, and Dahan has an eye for detailing that makes his movie all the more arresting.

The first thing to be said about Grace of Monaco is that it is not as maul-worthy as it has been made out to be. The next thing to be said about Olivier Dahan's movie is that it isn't exactly noteworthy. The best thing that can be said about the 103-minute biopic is that it is always lovely looking, dressed to the hilt and bathed in the kind of lambent light dear to films about movie and actual royalty.