The Duchess
12A, Nationwide
The Duchess is probably no more than a most handsomely mounted costume drama which is no bad thing if you happen to like handsomely mounted costume dramas, and I do, I do, I do! Lavishly directed by Saul Dibb, whose previous work (the gritty London film Bullet Boy; the TV drama series The Line of Beauty) I liked a great deal, it has stupendous frocks, ravishing hats and more stately homes than you could shake a stick at, not that I’d advise shaking a stick at a stately home. These days, security will have you off the property before you can even buy a tea-towel in the shop, and then what will you have to show for your day out? It also has its Colin Firth moment — is this now obligatory? — in the form of Dominic Cooper in a big, floaty white shirt, half undone. I can’t actually see what more you would want, costume drama wise, although if you want less I can highly recommend The Other Boleyn Girl, which offers a lot less of everything.
Based on Amanda Foreman’s best-selling biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire — an ancestor of Diana Spencer, and parallels are drawn — the film opens at Althorp in 1774. Here, 17-year-old Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightley), with hair whipped higher than Marge Simpson’s, frolics with some girlfriends on the lawn, while her mother (the always unsettling Charlotte Rampling) sits in the house brokering a deal for Georgiana to marry the much older Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). Georgiana, in her youth and optimism, imagines he loves her and Georgiana is very interested in love but, once married, she finds nothing could interest him less. He wants only a male heir.
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