Nicole Kidman has said she would not change her performance in the Grace Kelly biopic Grace of Monaco which is opening the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. 
 
 Set in the 1960s, Olivier Dahan's film focuses on Kelly's early years as a princess, when she was tempted to return to Hollywood by an offer from Alfred Hitchcock. The film has received mixed reviews and criticism from the royal family of Monaco. 
 
 Kidman spoke to the BBC's Arts Editor, Will Gompertz. ||||| It's traditional for Cannes to start with something spectacular. This is certainly no exception. It is a film so awe-inspiringly wooden that it is basically a fire-risk. The cringe-factor is ionospherically high. A fleet of ambulances may have to be stationed outside the Palais to take tuxed audiences to hospital afterwards to have their toes uncurled under general anaesthetic. 
 
 Grace of Monaco is a stately and swooning homage to Princess Grace, formerly Grace Kelly, focusing on her alleged courage in keeping plucky little Monaco safe for tax-avoiding billionaires. This was during its supremely parochial and uninteresting 1962 face-off with Charles De Gaulle, who wanted to absorb the principality and its monies into France's national bosom. So can Grace, by finally sacrificing her movie career on the altar of this cockamamie Ruritanian state, and flaunting her martyred couture loveliness, win the respect of the Monégasque folk and even the grumpy old Général himself? 
 
 The resulting film about this fantastically boring crisis is like a 104-minute Chanel ad, only without the subtlety and depth. Princess Grace herself is played by Nicole Kidman, wafting around the Palace with dewy-eyed features and slightly parted lips which make her look like a grown-up Bambi after a couple of cocktails, suddenly remembering his mother's violent death in the forest. 
 
 It doesn't seem that long since we endured a horrendous biopic of Princess Diana, that other super-rich blonde pasionaria — played by Naomi Watts. As audiences reeled into the foyer after that, they comforted themselves with the thought that surely things couldn't get worse. Surely they wouldn't be forced to endure another badly acted, badly directed film about a wealthy and self-pitying royal? 
 
 How very wrong. I can now actually imagine a creepy science-fiction short story about someone going back to prehistoric days in a time machine, killing a tiny trilobite, and then coming to the present to find everything the same, only now it's Naomi Watts playing Grace and Nicole Kidman playing Diana. 
 
 The movie begins with a sketch of jowly and adorable old Alfred Hitchcock (Roger Ashton-Griffiths) coming to Monaco hoping to tempt Grace back to the movies, proffering a juicy leading role in his latest film, Marnie. Two recent dramas about Hitchcock's troubled life — one for cinema, a better one for TV — have in fact begun in approximately the same way, but then followed the troubled director back to the US. Here, we stay with Kidman's Grace, who is effectively confronted by a dilemma. Should she return to her selfish, shallow life in Hollywood or build a new shallow, selfish life in Monte Carlo? 
 
 Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly in Grace of Monaco Photograph: Julien Panie/Warner Bros 
 
 
 
 And so the terrible mental turmoil begins. She pores over the script, late at night, in bed, with stylish reading glasses. During the day, she tries her darnedest to impress the wittering ladies of Monaco by entering into the spirit of charity galas and such. She worries about plotting against her at court. She consults her confidant, one Father Francis Tucker, a sorrowing priest who is evidently permitted the familiarity of calling her "Gracie", played with conviction by Frank Langella. 
 
 Then, in order to bone up on the history and culture of Monaco — and perhaps because the situation is not yet sufficiently gay — Grace consults a local nobleman, Count Fernando D'Aillieres, played by Derek Jacobi. He scampers about the hillsides, with Grace in tow, filling her in on all the tiresome details, while also presuming to give her tips on acting and deportment. (Surely as an Oscar-winning star she knows this stuff already?) Jacobi has a little fun with the part, although it needed Ian McKellen to come on, playing the Count's ageing houseboy. 
 
 But how about the people for whom it is all supposed to be about? Her, erm, husband and children? Well, the absolute indifference shown by Grace to her kids here is startling. And what of Prince Rainier himself, that fairy-tale prince for whom she gave it all up? He is played by Tim Roth, who gives a very cigarette-smoking, glasses-wearing, moustache-having performance. He is always leaning in his chair, leaning against door frames — looking through his glasses, and smoking. What is this remarkable head of state thinking about? As performed by Tim Roth, it looks like he is thinking about how much he regrets taking this appalling role, and how inadequate he considers his fee, whatever it is. 
 
 
 
 An interesting, complex film could be made about a talented woman who decides to make the best of being trapped in an imperfect marriage. But such a film would have to stop curtsying, and really think about its subject. 
 
 • Five other dreadful films that premiered at the festival 
 
 • Right - so what else might be good at this year's festival? Here's 24 other contenders 
 
 • And here's a video on the beach at Cannes in which Peter and others discuss the programme 
 
 • Watch a video review of the film ||||| Cannes Film Festival opening nights are glitzy affairs, with movies like “The Great Gatsby,” “Up” and “Midnight in Paris” premiering to the requisite tuxedoed fanfare in recent years. 
 
 On the surface, the same seemed to apply to the kickoff of this year’s edition Wednesday night, as Nicole Kidman’s much-awaited, somewhat-delayed Grace Kelly biopic, "Grace of Monaco" had its world premiere at a splashy event just a few miles from where the real-life princess’ story took place. 
 
 Yet the evening had an added element not normally found at Cannes opening nights: awkwardness. 
 
 A strange mood hovered over the screening of “Monaco" — or one of its versions, anyway — as the movie premiered to a muted response. 
 
 The glam trappings were, of course, everywhere. At the elaborate red-carpet ritual, announcers called out French and American celebrities as hundreds of professional photographers snapped photos and many more amateur ones craned for looks from the surrounding streets. 
 
 Photos See which actors, directors and movie mainstays made it to the French film festival. 
 
 Festival director Thierry Fremaux greeted the cast and filmmakers and posed for pictures with them, as he does on Cannes red carpets. And an elegant Kidman stood atop the steps of the Palais de Festivals, bedecked in a manner that evoked Kelly herself. 
 
 Inside the theater, French actor Lambert Wilson took the stage to greet Kidman and costar Tim Roth, who plays Prince Rainier, as “Princess Nicole and “Prince Tim,” even breaking with Cannes politesse to enter the crowd and spontaneously dance with Kidman at her seat. The event was given added heft when the jury — led by Jane Campion and featuring heavyweights such as Nicolas Winding Refn, Gael Garcia Bernal and Sofia Coppola — came out to the stage in the time-honored opening-night Cannes custom, with non-jury member Alfonso Cuaron then emerging and officially declaring the festival open. 
 
 But hanging over the screening that followed was the battle between U.S distributor the Weinstein Co. and the French filmmakers, including director Olivier Dahan and producer Pierre-Ange Le Pogam. Harvey Weinstein had last summer rejected a cut submitted by the French filmmakers and instead edited his own version with a different tone and feel, even pulling off the rare move of negotiating for the right to release his cut of the movie in the U.S. 
 
 Weinstein wasn’t at the screening Wednesday — and that was just the beginning of the strangeness. 
 
 It was the version the French preferred that screened Wednesday. And it didn’t go especially smoothly. The movie plays as melodramatically as billed, at times going for the overwrought close-up or schmaltzy music to emphasize what’s at stake. Some of its transitions also suggested a movie that had been chopped up and reassembled several times. (The movie, incidentally, focuses only somewhat on Kelly and Rainier’s relationship, or their respective inner lives, instead choosing to center much of the story on their reactions to a standoff between Rainier and French leader Charles de Gaulle over Monagasque sovereignty.) 
 
 More pointedly, Cannes opening-night films tend to generate standing ovations of at least five or six minutes, but the clapping after this one was mostly polite, and it was over after a brief two. A press screening earlier in the day also generated only modest excitement at best. 
 
 (Those who’ve seen it say that Weinstein’s version is lighter and more Capraesque, though whether we will ever get the chance to see it is another matter. More on that in a moment.) 
 
 The events at the start of the world’s most prestigious film festival were the most public example yet of a long-simmering battle. Weinstein and the French filmmakers have been trading salvos for months, with Weinstein’s edits prompting Dahan to go on a tirade in the French press in the fall and the French filmmakers retaliating by successfully submitting it as the Cannes opening-night film without consulting Weinstein in January. 
 
 The proceedings Wednesday served to offer an important reminder: Though it may be the most public form of a film’s unveiling, the hoopla of a red carpet can sometimes serve to conceal the turbulence within. 
 
 In Dahan’s particular case, concealment may not have been an issue, though: His expression and body language suggested a filmmaker uncomfortable about the state of affairs; he barely smiled and seemed to have a perfunctory air about him. 
 
 Weinstein, meanwhile, did not even make the trip to opening night. That offered the rare prospect of Kidman, with whom Weinstein often collaborates, basking in the attention on one of the most important nights of the film year without him. 
 
 Making matters more surreal, a representative of the U.S. film mogul issued a statement earlier in the day seeking to explain his absence. 
 
 “My wife Georgina and I have been in Jordan visiting two Syrian refugee camps, Al Zaatri yesterday and Azraq today,” Weinstein said in the statement. “This was a long planned trip with the UNHCR and our friend Neil Gaimon [sic] to bring attention to the plight of refugees who have been forced to flee Syria and the incredible work of UNHCR.” He concluded by offering an obligatory thank you to the producers and financiers, including Dahan and Le Pogam. 
 
 The audience reaction to the French version of the film, which opens across Europe in the coming weeks, creates a tantalizing number of possibilities for Weinstein. He could, of course, dump or withhold the French version of “Grace of Monaco,” saying that he was delivered a bad film and in turn salvaging some pride, if not dollars. 
 
 But Weinstein is spending as much as $4 million on the U.S. rights, making an outright dump hard to imagine. And, in a way, the tepid response could give him an opening to say he has the solution to what ails the film and offer a chance for him to vindicate himself in the battle with Dahan when he releases his own version. 
 
 Of course, that's a risky bet: If Weinstein does do that and it doesn’t work, he could end up in an even worse position, having made a point of saying he had the better alternative only for the marketplace to rebut the claim. The opening-night awkwardness is over, but the drama may yet linger. ||||| Nicole Kidman attends the opening ceremony and "Grace of Monaco" premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14. (Photo: Anthony Harvey, FilmMagic) 
 
 CANNES, France — Leave it to the Monaco royal family to provide one of the juiciest, scandal-filled world premieres in recent Cannes history. 
 
 Grace of Monaco, with Nicole Kidman playing the role of the Hollywood star turned real-life princess, brought everything you could hope for in a Cannes opening night. 
 
 There was glamour, of course, in the form of Kidman walking down the red carpet, as well as scandal (the Monaco royal family has railed loudly against the film) and intrigue (the film's U.S. distributor, Harvey Weinstein, was not happy with the finished product). 
 
 The royal offspring have been particularly vociferous about their displeasure with Grace of Monaco, which depicts their parents — Prince Rainier and Princess Grace — during a particularly emotionally trying time in their marriage and their tiny principality, about 30 miles from Cannes. course, in the form of Kidman walking down the red carpet, as well as scandal (the Monaco royal family has railed loudly against the film) and intrigue (the film's U.S. distributor Harvey Weinstein was reportedly not happy with the finished product). 
 
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 Princess Stephanie, Princess Caroline and Prince Albert stayed away from the premiere, vowing not to see the movie. Based on reading the script and seeing the trailer, they called it a "farce." 
 
 "I understand, it's their mother and father," Kidman said at a news conference here Wednesday. "And I understand it's protection of their mother and father. It's awkward, is what it is." 
 
 But the awkwardness did not stop there. Also hovering over the head of director Olivier Dahan was the rumbling of powerful distributor Weinstein of The Weinstein Company. 
 
 Hollywood trade publications have been filled with reports of Weinstein's unhappiness with the final cut of the film, with growing indications that he would back out of distributing it in the USA unless changes were made. An early Cannes screening for journalists on Wednesday led to a smattering of applause and tepid initial reviews (Time magazine's was headlined "The Real Scandal Around Grace of Monaco: It's Not Very Good.") 
 
 But at the Wednesday news conference, Dahan was able to pronounce that any problems with Weinstein had been smoothed over for the U.S. distribution, with no foreseen changes. 
 
 "Harvey will use that version. If changes need to be made, we'll do them together," said Dahan. "I am very happy." 
 
 This did not mean that Weinstein was happy enough to join the film premiere. Weinstein, who is due at the festival later in the week, had a humanitarian excuse for missing the premiere. 
 
 "My wife Georgina and I have been in Jordan visiting two Syrian refugee camps," Weinstein said in a release sent out during the Grace news conference. "This was a long-planned trip with the UNHCR (the United Nations refugee agency) ... to bring attention to the plight of refugees who have been forced to flee Syria." 
 
 Weinstein went on to wish the "Grace of Monaco team all the best for the screening in Cannes tonight." 
 
 Festival director Thierry Frémaux told USA TODAY that the film, which was shot in the South of France, was the perfect choice for an opening night movie. 
 
 "This is a film that reflects the spirit of a glamorous opening of the world's largest festival," said Frémaux. "And it allows Nicole Kidman to show that she is one of the greatest actresses in the world." 
 
 Kidman pointed out that part of the intrigue for both the movie and the premiere was the continued fascination over Grace Kelly, who died in a 1982 car crash after giving up her Hollywood career to marry Rainier and raise her family. 
 
 "She fascinated me and she still does," said Kidman. "And obviously she fascinates the world." 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1lpohac ||||| Grace of Monaco, a biopic about Grace Kelly's shift from Hollywood royalty to European monarch, has been slammed by most critics at the Cannes film festival. Surely there's a hero out there who can save the princess? 
 
 Critics can't decide if Grace of Monaco is stagey or stiff, wooden or cardboard. But, the majority agree, it's royally bad. 
 
 Olivier Dahan's film, which opened the Cannes film festival this week, stars Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly, escaping Hollywood to marry the handsome Prince Rainier of Monaco (Tim Roth). Monaco refuses to tax its billionaires and send the proceeds to Paris, so the plucky principality is blockaded. It's up to Grace to princess-up, learn the political game and save the day. 
 
 It's glitzy and empty, so wooden it's a fire-risk, says the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw in a review that tramples Dahan's tiara into a fine gold dust. "The cringe-factor is ionospherically high," he continues. "A fleet of ambulances may have to be stationed outside the Palais to take tuxed audiences to hospital to have their toes uncurled." 
 
 Bradshaw's disdain is shared by Robbie Collin of the Telegraph. Like Bradshaw, he draws comparisons with Naomi Watts's turn as Diana in Oliver Hirschbiegel's eponymous biopic of last year. Grace of Monaco is "fantastically silly", says Collin: "Dahan searches frantically for emotional potency in Kidman, often moving the camera so close to her face you worry the lens hood might bump her forehead." 
 
 The film has been called "a farce" by Kelly's children Prince Albert and Princess Caroline, while a grand spat between Dahan and his US distributor, Harvey Weinstein, thrilled many critics more than the film. The row, during which Dahan called Weinstein's unreleased edit "a pile of shit", was far more entertaining than anything happening on-screen, said Variety's Scott Foundas. "Kidman never appears to fully connect with the character," he says. "[She] delivers a series of doleful little-girl-lost-poses – and, later, pantomimed iron-jawed determination. 
 
 The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Dalton sides with Foundas: "Is it even possible to make a boring film out of this rich, juicy, gossipy material?" he asks. "It would seem so. Indeed, it is almost perversely impressive how Dahan misses almost every target." 
 
 Grace of Monaco opens with a quote from Kelly: "The idea of my life as a fairytale is itself a fairytale". In today's fairytale the film is the damsel in distress, the critics the big, bad wolf, but there's one knight in shining armour out there. Here, galloping over the hills, he comes: Geoffrey Macnab, our dashing hero from the Independent. The film is "a subtle and stylised character study", "an old fashioned weepy in which Kidman excels" and finally, "a film of considerable formal sophistication". 
 
 Macnab's gallantry might offer some small solace to Dahan, while the rest of the critics growl. ||||| Last year, 'The Great Gatsby' opened the Cannes Film Festival with a thud. This year, the festival opened with another big star drama, 'Grace of Monaco,' but many in the press screening were treating the biopic more like a comedy. 
 
 Many audible laughs were heard in the Wednesday screening ahead of its Cannes debut, and some reviewers subsequently ripped the Nicole Kidman starring flick. 
 
 Empire writer Damon Wise called it "the first camp classic ever to open the festival." 
 
 Hollywood Reporter reviewer Stehpen Dalton said director Oliver Dahan "misses almost every target and squanders almost every opportunity." 
 
 The Rotten Tomatoes' reviewer rating has it at a measly 6 percent. 
 
 The Cannes reviews should give ammunition to producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been reported to have told Dahan he wants a different ending. 
 
 The Rainier family has also not been pleased with the film, expressing their distaste at how their family was portrayed, although nobody had yet seen the film. 
 
 Kidman said she understood the royal family's fears but said they were misplaced. 
 
 "I feel sad because the film has no malice towards the family," she said at a press conference Wednesday. "Particularly Grace and Rainier."
– To say the premiere of Grace of Monaco, with Nicole Kidman in the title role, did not go well last night at Cannes would be an understatement. In an absolutely scathing review at the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw calls the biopic "a breathtaking catastrophe ... a film so awe-inspiringly wooden that it is basically a fire-risk," comparing it to "a 104-minute Chanel ad, only without the subtlety and depth." A separate Guardian article rounds up similarly awful reviews and wonders, "Is there a critic who liked it?" Fox News' amusing headline take: "Grace of Monaco called a great comedy, which is bad, because it's a drama." (And yes, the article notes, there were "many audible laughs" during the screening.) The Los Angeles Times notes that the premiere itself was "awkward," thanks to a disagreement between the French filmmakers and the Weinstein Co., which is distributing the film in the US. Harvey Weinstein doesn't like the French cut of the movie, which is what screened at Cannes, and he wasn't even in attendance. The audience seemed to agree with him, the Times notes: "Cannes opening-night films tend to generate standing ovations of at least five or six minutes, but the clapping after this one was mostly polite, and it was over after a brief two." Also adding to the drama: Princess Grace's children have called the movie a "farce," USA Today notes. But Kidman is standing behind the film, telling the BBC she doesn't regret the role.