The Duchess

Rating: 9/10 (15 December 2009)

My main fear before I saw the Duchess was that this was going to be another feminist movie about a "strong woman" in the 18th century. I was glad to discover that it wasn't. The Duchess of Devonshire Georgiana (played surprisingly well by Kiera Knightly) was an intelligent woman who was interested in politics, had ideas of her own, and had this refreshing ability to speak directly, a quality that was mirrored by her lover Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper). Yet Georgiana was not a strong woman. She was powerless against the things that life as a woman did to her. When the Duke (Ralph Fiennes in another great performance) wanted to rape Georgiana, he got his way because this is a society where a man of high rank enjoys almost absolute power -- especially over women -- and does not have to account for his deeds and misdeeds. When the Duke wanted to take on mistresses, he did so with impunity. When the Duke wanted to force Georgiana to separate from her lover, he succeeded by threatening to take away her children. "The Dutchess" in a phrase is dark, explicit and uncompromising portrait of aristocratic power in 18th century England with a very clear message: for women, independence and civil rights were an illusion. The glimmer of hope, of course, was that some of the women were making timid requests for greater independence for the first time.
This is not a pleasant picture by any means, but it is so well acted and so startling accurate that we actually feel empathy for people, like Georgiana. And that means something, even for a picture like the Duchess whose plot is no more complicate than repeated acts of submission. A brilliant film.