From Chilean director Pablo Larrain and a writer whose previous credits include the adaptations of YA novels The Maze Runner and the third film in the Divergent Series – Allegiant – which was such a disappointment that the next film in that series is releasing as a TV movie comes Natalie Portman as Jackie.

I wanted and expect to love Jackie.

Instead I found myself unconvinced by Natalie Portman’s role as the wife of JFK in the aftermath of his assassination in 1963.

Portman is an excellent actress and I knew little about Jackie Kennedy except that she was very glamorous, and lost her husband under horrific circumstances.

After watching this film, I felt like I knew just as little and could not be drawn into Portman’s portrayal of a woman experiencing PST in the hours following the assassination, and her interview with a journalist shortly afterward.

I adore watching inaccessible men in roles on screen, most notably out shortly, Casey Affleck is phenomenal as a family man coming to grips with loss in Manchester By The Sea, so perhaps it is a male thing, but I couldn’t get involved in this one.

I saw it in an LA cinema and there were scores of weeping women around me who clearly wept along for the ride, so best to judge this one for yourself.

Portman is clearly comfortable playing real people having done so in films like where she played a 16^th century Queen of England in The Other Boleyn Girl and more recently in A Tale of Love and Darkness, and she gives playing Jackie her all, but I could not connect with her.

Portman has not appeared in a film in Australian cinemas since Thor The Dark Wold back in October 2013, with her subsequent three films as an actress not securing a theatrical release. This may well turn the tide for her as it is tipped for Awards season glory. I sense I am in the minority on this one in that it did not work for me.

2 Stars.