No man, they say, is a hero to his valet.
The version of events leading to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, a decade ago, featured in the new docudrama Diana: Last Days of a Princess (TLC, Sunday, 8 p.m.), is based heavily on interviews with the personal staff of her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and nobody here comes off looking good.
Toward the end of this two-hour film, the first in what will surely be an avalanche of Di docs as the 10th anniversary of her death approaches, Al Fayed's massage therapist bitterly tells every person who ever bought a tabloid that they have blood on their hands. The inference is that the paparazzi killed the Princess of Wales, but the evidence we have been presented before this clip suggests that the blame can be spread a lot wider than that.
Sure, there is that shocking interview in which a tabloid editor, describing sales of the issue announcing Diana's death, says, "It was absolutely fantastic."
But there is also a portrait of Fayed as the pawn of a bullying father, tycoon Mohamed al-Fayed, who all but orders him to seduce Diana for the social prestige that will accrue to their family. Both father and son are shown to be tragically naive about the security the celebrity princess is going to need; their two bodyguards are described as overworked and exhausted on the night of the accident, and unable to stop Dodi's improvised plan to spirit the Princess out the backdoor of the Ritz in Paris.
Diana herself is portrayed as foolhardy in her decision to holiday that summer with the al-Fayeds in France, and contradictory in her desires for both publicity and privacy.
"The big problem with Diana is that she thought you could pick it up and put it down when you wanted to," Daily Mirror photo editor Paul Bennett argues. "You can't do that. Once you start playing, you've got to play the game completely."
Who needs an MI-5 plot, when you have this crew?
That said, the film is not unsympathetic to Diana, for all that it shows her foibles and her follies. Created by British director and documentarian Richard Dale, Last Days of a Princess is intended as a portrait of the private woman in the last month of her life and is largely taken up by dramatic scenes in which actress Genevieve O'Reilly ( Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith) plays Diana.
It's a convincing performance, not merely an imitation: O'Reilly makes her Diana seem more intelligent than the woman one used to hear in television interviews, but equally caring, fun-loving and glamour-seeking, torn between a love of her own celebrity and a desire for a normal life with her sons. In one key scene, she remains on the deck of the al-Fayed yacht with Dodi, after they have spotted the cameras with telephoto lenses on a nearby boat.
Initially, Dale's decision to mix interviews with real people and a dramatic script makes one queasy; he slickly cuts from an old news clip in which the real Diana enters a ballet premiere in a gorgeous cocktail dress to a scene inside the theatre in which O'Reilly plays the Princess in the identical frock.
Obviously, scenes depicting Diana's thoughts and feelings are purely speculative, and a tête-à-tête in which Diana and Dodi compare teddy bears and swap stories of their lonely childhoods is downright yucky. But the technique eventually justifies itself because the interviews bear out what the dramatizations are showing.
For example, Dale intersperses scenes in which the Mohamed al-Fayed orders his son to the yacht in St. Tropez and yells at him not to mess this one up; with an interview with Al-Fayed bodyguard Kez Wingfield, in which the security man carefully describes his boss's relationship with his son. Wingfield observes that Mohamed often criticized Dodi, but that Dodi never fought back. That interview with Wingfield is the linchpin of this film.
Dale also secured an interview with Mohammed al-Fayed, but the owner of Harrods says nothing particularly new or interesting. It is Wingfield who gives evidence of his boss's desire to get back at the Royal Family for perceived snubs and of his own futile attempts with colleague Trevor Rees-Jones, who was to be gravely injured in the crash, to get more security for Diana during the holiday.
Dale shows al-Fayed and his son - wealthy men with a personal bodyguard a piece, but not international celebrities with a full security team - as completely unprepared for the amount of attention Diana would bring with her. (One also feels, watching this film, although Dale does not make this accusation, that the British government should not have allowed her to travel abroad without her own security detail.)
Massage therapist Myriah Daniels describes the trip back from the Mediterranean to Paris the day before the accident, saying, "All of the drivers were driving too fast. Everybody. The day really just got out of control and none of us could get a handle on it."
"Events were overtaking us," Wingfield agrees, calling the deaths in the Paris tunnel of Diana, Dodi and driver Henri Paul unnecessary. One could add avoidable too.
John Doyle returns later this month.
Quick picks
Monday
It has been nine years since that show about nothing went off the air, but Seinfeld lives on in the hearts of its fans. You can always catch it somewhere in reruns, but this week TVtropolis puts it front and centre with a prime-time best of Seinfeld lineup that devotes a day to each character on the show. Monday begins with the best of Jerry, featuring such treasured episodes as the one in which he finds out he has agreed to wear a ridiculous pirate shirt during a TV appearance as a favour to a fashion designer who has such a low voice he didn't hear what she was asking. The best of George, Elaine, Kramer and the supporting characters follow on subsequent days.
TVtropolis 8 to 9 p.m. ET/PT nightly Aug. 13 to 17
Wednesday
Newsworld is repeating the six-part CBC documentary Sex, Truth and Videotape this month and next, exposing us to Canadian women's frank thoughts about their bodies and their sex lives. In part one, five celebrities - well, that's a relative term in this country - tell us about the first time and the current state of affairs. Their honesty is both bracing and funny. Comic Mary Walsh never enjoyed sex until she hit 40 and quit drinking; opera singer Measha Brueggergosman saved herself for her marriage at 21 to another virgin and six years later she's loving it. Writer Susan Swann apparently thinks eight months is a very long time to be celibate; surprisingly, the ever-sensual dancer Margie Gillis lacks a life partner. Director Francine Pelletier intersperses these interviews with telling examples of the women's art.
Wednesdays to Sept. 19 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBC Newsworld
Kate Taylor