There is nothing in Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco, a precious, rarified tale of French political maneuver and regal appearances, that persuades or reaches out in a dramatic sense or which resembles “life” as most of us know it. It may as well be taking place on the ice planet of Hoth. It’s basically about a socially isolated prisoner, the former Grace Kelly (Nicole Kidman) who became Princess Grace of Monaco when she married Prince Rainer (Tim Roth) in April 1956, chafing against the restrictions of her marriage and title and mulling a return to the screen as the star of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Marnie. (Fate spared her that embarassment.) Right away I was muttering to myself “who cares?” I was chafing against the restrictions that came with watching this film, I can tell you. The word that best applies is “mediocre.” Grace of Monaco is essentially a TNT movie aimed at older women who remember Grace’s car-crash death in ’82 (as traumatic in its time to Princess Di‘s passing in ’97) and who revere the notion of marrying into royalty and all that. I couldn’t have felt less involved. This is one of those movies that you do your best to sit through.

The most arresting sequence, for me, is one in which Kidman/Kelly is shown racing her sports car around winding hairpin turns in the hills above Monte Carlo. On one level it foreshadows the circumstances of Grace’s actual demise in the same area, but it’s shot and cut to closely resemble a similar scene in To Catch a Thief with Kelly driving and Cary Grant riding shotgun. Not a profound moment but nicely done all the same.

If you think any visiting journalist or critic is excited about seeing Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco tomorrow morning, think again. This trouble-plagued historical drama is certainly among the most unexciting if not unwelcome openers in the history of the Cannes Film Festival. In an interview with Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn, Cannes topper Thierry Fremaux admits that “of course we said no to great filmmakers….we have seen 1,800 movies for the selection, which means 1,740 times we say ‘no.'” And yet he said “yes” to Grace of Effing Monaco and, for that matter, Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Only God Forgives, which played last year?

Fremaux has also seemingly undermined the credibility of an explanation offered last month by Fox Searchlight’s Stephen Gilula about why Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu‘s Birdman isn’t playing the Cannes Film Festival, i.e., because it “won’t complete post production until late May or early June.” In Kohn’s article Fremaux says Fox Searchlight flat out “declin[ed] to submit” Birdman and therefore “decided to bypass” Cannes. That sounds to me like he’s saying Gilula was fibbing.

L.A. Times reporter Steven Zeitchik has explained what the Grace of Monaco conflict between Harvey Weinstein and director Olivier Dahan is basically about. Their dispute has resulted in two Graces — a darker French version vs. a somewhat lighter “Harvey Scissorhands” American version. Dahan’s French version will open the Cannes Film Festival, as if anyone cares. I don’t believe that anyone in my realm gives a toss…really. In my head all hopes for Grace of Monaco went south many months ago once the U.S. opening began getting bumped. Everyone smelled trouble, and nobody was all that interested to begin with. DOA, VOD…forget it.

“The Weinstein version of Grace apparently shows Grace Kelly‘s story as a light fairy tale with a strong dose of wish fulfillment,” Zetichik reports. “Dahan and producer Le Pogam have fashioned a more melodramatic‎ account that highlights Kelly’s hardships upon her arrival in the monarchy.” Zeitchik adds that Dahan’s original director’s cut “was far darker than either cut and is no longer in play.”

Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco has been announced as the opening night film of the 67th Cannes Film Festival (May 14 thru 25). Okay but honestly? If I was Thierry Fremaux I would have held out for a film that doesn’t seem like damaged goods. The Weinstein Co. release never looked that great, especially with Tim Roth as Prince Rainer. It was going to open, remember, on 11.27.13. Then it was bumped into March 2014. And now this.

TheWrap‘s Todd Cunningham reported this evening (Monday, 9.23) that The Weinstein Co. has decided to bump Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco into early 2014 — almost certainly due to concerns about the biopic’s ability to hold its own during award season. The film, which costars Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly and a moustachioed Tim Roth as Prince Rainer, had been set for an 11.27 limited opening. (Kidman offered a few words about Grace at a Weinstein Co. promo party during last May’s Cannes Film Festival.) Cunningham reports that Grace “has been pushed to next year to allow for the film’s completion, according to an individual close to the project.” He adds that “the most likely scenario at this point calls for a January release in France ahead of a U.S. debut in March.”

Soon after the 4.2 finale of HBO’s Big Little Lies it was clear that Nicole Kidman‘s performance would be getting the big Emmy push. The pushing will last several weeks as Emmy nomination voting runs from 6.12 to 6.26. The articles and tweets have mostly advanced the career-tribute narrative — it’s not just Kidman’s turn as Celeste-the-abused-wife but her whole 28-year career. If you count Dead Calm as the beginning, I mean.

That’s a pretty good trick considering that over the last six or seven years Kidman has made herself into a kind of Queen of the Indie Bs, giving her all in one eye-rollingly bad, mezzo-mezzo or not-good-enough film after another — Trespass, The Paperboy, Stoker (which I hated), The Railway Man, Grace of Monaco (grotesque), Before I Go to Sleep, Paddington, Strangerland, Queen of the Desert, The Family Fang (a decent film that quickly disappeared), Secret in Their Eyes and Genius. Yes, Kidman was reasonably okay in Lion but don’t get carried away.

Kidman will soon be seen in the Geraldine Page role in Sofia Coppola‘s The Beguiled (Focus, 6.23). She’ll have three films in Cannes — The Beguiled, Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Killing of a Sacred Deer and John Cameron Mitchell‘s How To Pick Up Girls At Parties.

What Kidman performances have really and truly earned the gold medal? 13 in all. I’ve listed them not in order of preference but sequence: Dead Calm (’89 — I knew when I first saw this that Kidman had “it”), My Life (’93 — Michael Keaton‘s taller wife standing by as he dies of cancer), To Die For (’95 — probably her pinnacle performance — certainly the cleanest and most confident), Moulin Rouge! (’01), The Others (’01), Birthday Girl (’01), The Hours (’02 — “by a nose”), Dogville (her second best ever, just a notch behind To Die For), The Human Stain (’03), Birth (’04), The Interpreter (’05 — I have a soft spot for this Sydney Pollack film), Margot at the Wedding (’07) and Rabbit Hole (’10)

I’m glad that Kidman has achieved a kind of bounce-back effect with Big Little Lies. But there’s no disputing she’d been in a long, slow downswirl cycle for seven years prior. On the plus side she had a vivid, luminous career for 21 years before that (i.e., starting with Rabbit Hole and working backwards).

Grace of Monaco, the endlessly delayed, theatre-avoiding Grace Kelly biopic with Nicole Kidman, will air on Lifetime on Monday, 5.25. Here’s most of the review that I posted almost exactly a year ago in Cannes: “Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco is a precious, rarified tale of French political maneuver and regal appearances, and I am telling you straight that it has nothing that persuades or reaches out in a dramatic sense or which resembles ‘life’ as most of us know it. It may as well be taking place on the ice planet of Hoth.

“It’s about how socially isolated the former Grace Kelly (Nicole Kidman) felt when she married Prince Rainer (Tim Roth) in April 1956, and became Princess Grace of Monaco. The story focuses on Grace chafing against the restrictions of her marriage and title and mulling a return to the screen as the star of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Marnie. (Fate spared her that embarassment.) Right away I was muttering to myself ‘who cares?’ I was chafing against the restrictions that came with watching this film, I can tell you.

“Grace of Monaco is essentially a TNT movie aimed at older women who remember Grace’s car-crash death in ’82 (as traumatic in its time to Princess Di‘s passing in ’97) and who revere the notion of marrying into royalty and all that. I couldn’t have felt less involved. This is one of those movies that you do your best to sit through.

“The most arresting sequence, for me, is one in which Kidman/Kelly is shown racing her sports car around winding hairpin turns in the hills above Monte Carlo. On one level it foreshadows the circumstances of Grace’s actual demise in the same area, but it’s shot and cut to closely resemble a similar scene in To Catch a Thief with Kelly driving and Cary Grant riding shotgun. Not a profound moment but nicely done all the same.

Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco, which will open the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, has long been presumed to be a total wash. Initially slated for release by the Weinstein Co. in November 2013, them bumped to 3.14.14, and then yanked again in favor of the Cannes slot . I’ve no interest in, much less sympathy for, a classy actress who marries for money and then realizes a few years down the road that she can barely stand the guy she married, much less feel love for him, and that she feels trapped and wants out. No sympathy at all. There’s also the highly problematic casting of Tim Roth as Prince Rainer. Consider the face of the Real McCoy — kindly expression, nice-enough features, mellow attitude. Then consider Roth’s demon-seed features — the face of a malevolent bad guy if I ever saw one. There’s no crossover, no similarity, no appeal. Roth has the face of a scowling reptile. Grace of Monaco died the day he was cast.

Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi and his wife, Princess Grace (the former Grace Kelly) on a yacht sometime around 1961 or ’62.

Tim Roth, whose rancid, pissed-off vibe and generally unappealing features killed this movie the instant he was cast. I loved Roth in Nic Jarecki’s Arbitrage, but he can’t play husbands or boyfriends or anything in that realm. He has to play feisty gargoyle characters and/or attitude monkeys. Roth was perfect in Stephen Frears’ The Hit and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

Nicole Kidman‘s Vanity Fair cover story, written by Sam Kashner, is basically a personal issues article about focusing on family and accepting the gradual diminishment of marquee power. But what’s the promotion angle? I’m presuming the cover was originally intended to promote her starring role in Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco, which was going to open on 11.27.13 before getting bumped into a March 2014 date in late September, or roughly six weeks ago. It couldn’t be her supporting role in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues — that’s a movie about a big moustachioed doofus and three medium-level doofuses. And it can’t be her costarring role in Railway Man, which no one was very excited about in Toronto and doesn’t appear to be opening this year in the U.S.

I was reading Andrew Stewart‘s 10.29 Variety story about Paramount having officially slated Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street for a 12.25.13 release when I was jerked alert by a phrase at the end of the story. Yes, okay, I stole that expression from Tom Wolfe‘s “The Painted Word,” but I nonetheless sat up and said “whoa.”

Stewart writes that “a list of other Oscar contenders have vacated the race in recent weeks, including Sony Classics’ Foxcatcher,” the Weinstein Co.’s Grace of Monaco and Sony’s The Monuments Men, which sources say the studio pushed back based on the assumption that Paramount would end up making the year-end release for Wall Street.”

Award-season films are suddenly dropping like flies. It began with the date-shifting of Grace of Monaco. Then the discrediting of Diana (which no one ever thought was going to be good, much less exceptional). Then the possible postponement of Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street (please, please stay the course, Paramount!). And now Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher — a 12.20 Sony Classics release that’s been drop-kicked into 2014. Look at the trailer, for God’s sake. Solemn mood, refined chops and what is clearly an exceptional, possibly nominatable Steve Carell performance. (Plus a very interesting one from Channing Tatum.) The season has just become less interesting, less dimensional. One less highly nutritious film for December. (I’ve read the script — trust me.) I for one feel cheated, shortchanged. If I were Carell right now I’d be punching the refrigerator door like nobody’s business.