Grace Of Monaco, the misbegotten Grace Kelly biopic starring Australia’s own Nicole Kidman, has had a pretty rough trot – it was booed when it opened at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and taken to task by critics for being “fluff” and filled with “major historical inaccuracies.”
Producer Harvey Weinstein famously fell out with director Olivier Dahan, and eventually, following a negative reception, decided to withdraw the film altogether from cinematic release, opting instead to give it to the cable network Lifetime, to make an inauspicious debut as a TV movie.
Lifetime finally got around to showing Grace Of Monaco in America over Memorial Day Weekend, but most of the attention went to screenwriter Arash Amel, who live-Tweeted it, lashing out at those who helped ruin the film, and spilling behind-the-scenes stories about those involved.
The following Tweet is a fairly good indicator of the shady tone:
Director Dahan caught most of the criticism, as Amel noted that he had taken a naturalistic script and turned it a gaudy melodrama, stripping away all the subtext and realism.
Interestingly, he took the side of Harvey Weinstein, noting that the heavyweight producer had attempted to help him “save the catastrophe” and restore the film to a “writer’s cut”, but that Dahan refused to collaborate.
His behind-the-scenes anecdotes are particularly entertaining. At one point, he noted that an entire, key sequence involving characters walking down stairs was lost by a film development lab, forcing the crew to reshoot the entire thing.
He also told a story about the time a nearby forest fire left a set covered in ash, and mentioned that the film’s unit production manager walked off several weeks into shooting, and was never seen again.
He was equally scathing about the score, noting that Dahan’s film “washes away” great performances with unnecessary music, and lamenting that the one scene remaining more or less intact from his script was drowned out by soundtrack.
On the flipside, Amel had nothing but glowing things to say about the cast, noting that it was “terrific” to work with Nicole Kidman and Tim Roth, and praising Parker Posey for her professionalism.
Amel said that Grace Of Monaco was his “filmmaking Vietnam”, noting that, while he survived it, he will never be the same. The one upside to it all? The movie was apparently huge in Japan, where it ran for weeks.
There are way too many Tweets to reasonably include here, but if you head over to Amal’s Twitter account, you can scroll through for his full list of beefs with the film.
