Very flat, Norfolk

Rating: 4/10 (1 January 2009)

Yes, Keira looks good in costume dramas. Just because she's so un-busty we like to see her bones squeezed in corsets. The contrast makes old viands taste more contemporary. But at the eleventh period piece in a row the Knightley effect is losing its sting fast, and however nuanced her acting may have become in the process - dashing with poise - this spice alone can't cover the staleness of the product. For the enduring vitality of a period piece - as of any other movie, but more than most genres - rests ultimately on the screenplay, not on the star appeal or the production values, and "The Duchess" is no exception. The sheer fact that its subject is taken from life - a biography, in fact - and not based on one of those immortal Austenian novels already studded with witty lines, which would stand any treatment and still sound fresh, should have advised on some extra writing effort, but the authors thought otherwise. They seem to have believed that putting Sheridan, the Duchess of Devonshire - the most admired literate beauty of Georgian society - and her lover, a future Whig Prime Minister, together into some Adam interior would have produced instant wit, and dispensed with literally putting it in the script. Unluckily for us, it proved not to be so. Poor Georgiana, a chatty character we must presume, and a writer in her own right, is always left with nothing to say or to do, but sobbing, inhaling, glancing and - yes - pouting. Even the usually infallible charm of English buildings and landscapes suffers severely from the general lack of character: the countryside is shapeless, neither sunny nor cloudy, hour and season are nondescript, and Palladian architecture looks wearisome and predictable - you can't endlessly revisit the staircase of Holkham Hall throughout the movie and escape boredom. The overall impression is that of a comedy of manners staged by the National Trust, a well-meaning stint at reliving the splendours of centuries past - coaches, valets, hounds and wigs for the benefit of tourists: the whole "Georgian experience" - in some stately mansion from which life has been drained away long time ago.