Grace of Monaco is an American-French biography film about the life of Grace Kelly, directed by Olivier Dahan and written by Arash Amel. The film stars Nicole Kidman in the titular role. It also features a supporting cast of Frank Langella, Parker Posey, Derek Jacobi, Paz Vega, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Milo Ventimiglia and Tim Roth.
Grace of Monaco is focused on former Hollywood star Grace Kelly’s crisis of marriage and identity, during a dispute between Monaco’s Prince Rainier III and France’s Charles De Gaulle and a looming French military invasion of the principality in the early 1960s.
Production began in September 2012 in Paris and Menton, France. In October 2012, the production moved to Italy, first to Grimaldi, the village near Ventimiglia, which bears the name of the royal house of Monaco, then in Mortola, near Ventimiglia at Villa Hanbury.
The production was granted permission to close Monaco’s main square for 24 hours between October 29–30, 2012, and during this time the cast were seen filming outside and around the Monte Carlo Casino.
The director of the film, Oliver Dahan has been vocal on the final cut disagreements he has with the film’s US distributor Harvey Weinstein. He told Libération, “It’s right to struggle, but when you confront an American distributor like Weinstein, not to name names, there is not much you can do. Either you say, ‘Go figure it out with your pile of shit’ or you brace yourself so the blackmail isn’t as violent … If I don’t sign, that’s where the out-and-out blackmail starts, but I could go that far. There are two versions of the film for now: mine and his … which I find catastrophic.”
In April 2014, only two weeks before its opening night premiere at Cannes, Variety reported that Weinstein was considering dropping the film for US distribution. It was reported several weeks later that Weinstein had decided to keep the film. Weinstein said that the cut shown at Cannes was missing a key scene that would address the ‘legitimate concerns’ raised by the royal family over the depiction in Dahan’s movie. Though Amel never publicly took a side in the long-running feud over final cut, he refused to attend the film’s official photo call and press conference at the Cannes Film Festival for the director’s cut being screened.
At the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, notable absences at the press conference and official photo-call were Harvey Weinstein and the film’s screenwriter Arash Amel. Weinstein cited charitable work in Syria as the reason for his absence, while Amel told The Hollywood Reporter that “he doesn’t want his “big first Cannes moment” undermined by the controversy surrounding the dueling cuts.”
Grace of Monaco
Directed by: Olivier Dahan
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, André Penvern, Parker Posey, Paz Vega, Frank Langella, Jeanne Balibar
Screenplay by: Arash Amel
Production Design by: Dan Weil
Cinematography: Eric Gautier
Film Editing by: Olivier Gajan
Costume Design by: Gigi Lepage
Music by: Christopher Gunning
MPAA Rating: None.
Studio: The Weinstein Company
Release Date: March 14, 2014
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