Naomi Watts reckons that Diana gave her ‘permission’ from beyond the grave to make this film about the final years of her life. She might be better reading the script more closely next time, instead of the tea leaves. If a tabloid paper and the people behind the sofa adverts that litter TV on Bank Holidays got together, they might make something like this bum-clenchingly embarrassing ‘romance’ from ‘Downfall’ director Oliver Hirschbiegel. The focus is on Diana’s two-year fling with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews). For a while you giggle at a script worthy of daytime telly. ‘I’ve been a mad bitch,’ Diana says after a bust-up. But your nerves soon start to fry.
Friends of Diana say Khan was the love of her life. But this is about as sexy as ‘Songs of Praise’. ‘He doesn’t treat me like a princesss,’ says Diana. No, he takes her to Chicken Cottage. In the end, the media storm that comes with being involved with The Most Famous Woman In The World gives Khan cold feet. They split.
So where’s Dodi? Well, he’s just some bloke with a yacht who Diana uses to make the doc jealous. Watts nails the two-cans-of-hairspray helmet hair and spidery mascara. But her captain-of-the-lacrosse-team, onwards-and-upwards performance is way off the mark, if the flirty, damaged, ruthless, vulnerable woman in Martin Bashir’s famous interview is anything to go by. A right royal mess.