The Duchess (2008)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

Saul Dibb

Writers (WGA):

Jeffrey Hatcher (screenplay) and
Anders Thomas Jensen (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

10 September 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | History

Tagline:

There were three people in her marriage

Plot:

A chronicle of the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who was reviled for her extravagant political and personal life.

Plot Keywords:

Duke | Duchess | 18th Century | Children | Sex

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 4 wins & 13 nominations

Cast

Keira Knightley	...	Georgiana
Ralph Fiennes	...	The Duke
Charlotte Rampling	...	Lady Spencer
Dominic Cooper	...	Charles Grey
Hayley Atwell	...	Bess Foster
Simon McBurney	...	Charles Fox
Aidan McArdle	...	Richard Sheridan
John Shrapnel	...	General Grey
Alistair Petrie	...	Heaton
Patrick Godfrey	...	Dr. Neville
Michael Medwin	...	Speechmaker
Justin Edwards	...	Macaroni
Richard McCabe	...	Sir James Hare
Calvin Dean	...	Devonshire House Servant
Hannah Stokely	...	Devonshire House Maid

Also Known As:

La duchessa (Italy)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sexual content, brief nudity and thematic material.

Runtime:

110 min

Country:

UK | Italy | France

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital | DTS | SDDS

Certification:

USA:PG-13 (certificate #44471) | UK:12A | Ireland:15A | South Korea:15 | Australia:M | Hong Kong:IIA | Switzerland:10 (canton of Vaud) | Switzerland:10 (canton of Geneva) | Netherlands:12 | Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia/Ontario) | Sweden:7 | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Manitoba) | New Zealand:M | Brazil:14 | Singapore:M18 | Argentina:13 | Czech Republic:U | Portugal:M/12 (Qualidade) | Germany:12 (f)

Filming Locations:

Bath, Somerset, England, UK

Company:

Paramount Vantage

Trivia:

This is the second period film starring Keira Knightley that opens with the view of her walking across grass carrying something. In Pride & Prejudice (2005), she is walking across grass carrying a book. In this movie, she is carrying a hat with names for runners in a race.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: In the scene with the little girls in the carriage, when they print on the screen the names of Harryo, Little G, and Charlotte, they mix up Harryo and Little G's names. Harryo is the youngest, with the dark hair, but they put the name "Little G" in the front of this child and put "Harryo" in front of the blond older child. In a subsequent scene, Harryo, the youngest with the dark hair, falls and scrapes her knee. Georgiana specifically calls her by name, Harryo. In fact, Little G was older than Harryo. So the scene with the names is incorrect, while the scene with the scraped knee is correct.

Quotes:

Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire: He loves me?
Lady Spencer: Yes, of course.
Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire: I have only met him twice.
Lady Spencer: When one truly loves someone, one doesn't have to know them well to be sure, Georgiana. One feels it right away.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The 81st Annual Academy Awards (2009) (TV)

An entertaining film which promises much for the future

The career of Keira Knightley has been somewhat of a mixed bag. She has had strong moments, invariably under the direction of Joe Wright, and she has had her less brilliant moments, mainly in the later "Pirates of the Caribbean" films. But, in "The Duchess", an entertaining and moving portrait of Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, she truly shows signs that she is coming of age with a performance of subtlety and nuance.

The film has been marketed with not so subtle emphases on Georgiana's relative, Diana, Princess of Wales. The tagline for the film, "There were three people in her marriage", is not only, by my count, a miscalculation (a serious miscalculation if you count the dogs) but also guilty of creating a subtext which simply isn't in the film. Anybody looking for a film about Diana will be disappointed. Anyone looking for an entertaining film won't be.

The film is a moving portrait of a very tragic figure, brought to life by a career best performance from Keira Knightely. Her abilities have grown over recent years, with "Atonement" being her previous best, but here she shows great potential. She is ably supported by Ralph Fiennes, who is on fine form. His performance never descends into caricature or cartoonish villainy, but maintains a sense of humanity, no matter how selfish it is, underneath his characters various inexcusable actions. There is also a fine performance from Charlotte Rampling, though there is a weak link in the person of Dominic Cooper, who is too young for his part and struggles with it.

The witty and emotive script has a lot to recommend it and its characters are put into an engrossing and lavish world, successfully created by the director Saul Dibb. Extraordinary costumes fill the extraordinary locations, and there is a beautiful score by Rachael Portman to accompany it. The result is a fairly stylish affair.

The film's exploration of unfortunate innocence and the loss of freedom is at times poignant and adds to what is an extremely satisfying experience at the cinema and provides a great deal of promise for the future from its director and its star.