'Duchess' works as light historical drama

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on October 10, 2008 at 4:30 AM, updated January 26, 2012 at 10:59 AM
Keira Knightley in 'The Duchess.'

For all its assets, it's not so much what the Georgian-period drama "The Duchess" has that makes it such a satisfying bit of historical cinema. Rather, it's what it doesn't.

Specifically, it boasts a lack of self-indulgence on the part of Saul Dibb, a mostly untested 29-year-old British director whose only previous feature experience of note came with 2002's well-received urban drama "Bullet Boy."

Where other period films tend to tack an extra five minutes onto the running time for every powdered wig or ripped bodice, "The Duchess" features few wasted scenes and few wasted characters over its nicely trimmed 1 hour 50 minutes.

Keira Knightley and Hayley Atwell in 'The Duchess.'


2.5 stars, out of 4

Plot: The story of England's real-life Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, whose political and social dealings were out-drama-ed only by her own marriage.

What works: Director Saul Dibb shows a deft, unindulgent touch, making nearly every scene matter.

What doesn't: There's a certain ordinariness to the story.

Starring: Kiera Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Charlotte Rampling, Hayley Atwell. Director: Saul Dibb. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Rating: PG-13, for sexual content, brief nudity and thematic material. Where: Canal Place, Elmwood Palace, West Bank Palace, Hollywood 14 (Covington).


Official site for 'The Duchess.'

That still leaves Dibb time to include all the visual eloquence you'd expect from a healthily budgeted period drama -- the costumes, the set dressings, the frequently pouting Keira Knightley -- with enough room left over for a heaping helping of soap-opera moments.

In the film's press notes, studio Paramount Vantage points out that the duchess in the title -- Georgiana Spencer (Knightley) -- is a distant relative of Diana, Princess of Wales. That fact, however, is mostly an incidental tidbit. Diana's story has little to do with Georgiana's, and vice-versa. (Lady Di isn't even mentioned in the obligatory on-screen post-scripts at the end of "The Duchess" -- and to Dibb's credit, too, since doing so would have come off as more than a touch exploitative.)

Not that Georgiana and Diana had nothing in common. Both were celebrities, by virtue of their convention-defying social and political doings. Both were also trapped in mutually unsatisfying marriages.

As "The Duchess" tells it, the only thing Georgiana wanted from her marriage to the cold-fish Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) was genuine affection. The only thing he wanted was a male heir.

As unfulfilling as they are, things only worsen for Georgiana when the Duke moves his mistress into the house and threatens to take Georgiana's daughters from her if she doesn't accept the situation in the way he thinks an obedient wife should.

In public, she does the stiff-upper-lip thing. Inside, however, her femininity is going up in smoke -- in one scene, literally -- as she brims with resentment and desperation.

The reliable Fiennes plays the Duke as a devastatingly emotionless and thoroughly unwavering bastard, but aside from his scenes, "The Duchess" doesn't muck around with subtleties.

That tendency toward melodrama aside, the film has other problems. There are times, for instance, when the whole story seems a touch ordinary. Dibb also unfortunately glosses over many of the things that made Georgiana so famous in her time -- and so interesting in ours -- namely her political involvement at a time when women's suffrage was nonexistent, her love of gambling and her trend-setting fashion sense.

Still, "The Duchess" doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is: a comfortable, low-calorie morsel of historical drama. As long as movie-goers don't expect anything more, they'll be entertained.