Chilean director Pablo Larrain has deftly crafted a movie that provides a powerfully  intimate insight into one person's private anguish and shattered legacy.

After President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in a Dallas motorcade on November 22, 1963, First Lady Jackie Kennedy (exquisitely played by Natalie Portman) is abruptly transformed from Presidential spouse to America's First Widow.

This most remarkable biopic captures how Jackie's public persona contrast with her  fight through grief and trauma to regain her faith, console her children and define her husband’s legacy.

Jackie is not a typical Hollywood-style biopic spanning a person's entire life. Rather, the film dwells on the week following the assassination, interspersed with archival footage in which Portman is inserted.

These flashback vignettes reveal a glowing housewife, a frightened mother and a broken-hearted wife. Combined, Jackie is the quintessential cynosure: the centre of attention and admiration.

Jackie Kennedy is acutely aware that news often moulds the first version of history. She therefore summons a LIFE magazine journalist Theodore H. White (superbly played by Billy Crudup) a week after her husband's death in order to commence crafting the Camelot legend.

During the course of the interview the incongruities and complexities of Jackie Kennedy are revealed. She is cunning but impulsive. Delicate and naive but with a steely resolve. An eclectic mixture of ambition, dread and fragility.

The journalist and the widow do not have a warm relationship but both realise they are engaged in myth-making. They are crafting the 'Jackie story' for a grieving American public. In this sense Jackie appears to be performing at all times.

The interview provides a glimpse of how Jackie changes naturally between her breathless public persona and the fiercely private qualities she possesses. The black Swiss lace veil worn at JFK's funeral, fluttering beguiling in the wind, is symbolic of Jackie's complexity; it only reveals what she wanted the world to see.

Jackie is a tight movie with Natalie Portman appearing in almost every screen shot. She delivers a career best in Jackie. Her powerful, commanding presence with an intense look in her eyes draws you in, forcing you to try and comprehend the complexities entwined within. It becomes utterly mesmerising.  

The most prophetic line in the film is uttered by Robert Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard) who only plays a fleeting role: 'History is harsh. In no time, we are ridiculous.' In this sense Jackie Kennedy is perhaps the epitome of a Greek tragedy.

It screens on Sunday, April 30 at the Lilac City Cinema at 4.30pm. Entry is $10. Running Time is 100 mins and the film is rated rated MA 15+.