Every man in England is in love with her- except her husband

Rating: 7/10 (18 September 2008)

The marriage between Lady Georgiana Spencer and William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, was an arranged union between two of eighteenth-century England's most powerful aristocratic families. It appears to have been loveless from the start; the Duke was more interested in hunting and his dogs than in his wife, whom he only married so that she might provide him with a son and heir. He took his wife's best friend, Lady Elizabeth Foster, as his mistress; the three lived under the same roof in a ménage a trois. Georgiana threw herself into her own interests- gambling and political campaigning- and eventually took a lover of her own, the handsome young politician (and future Prime Minister) Charles Grey, by whom she had an illegitimate daughter.
The publicity material for this film has made much of the supposed parallels between Georgiana and her kinswoman Princess Diana, born more than two centuries later, even using the tagline "There were three people in her marriage", a clear reference to Diana's famous remark during her 1995 "Panorama" interview. There are, of course, differences. Diana, for example, was never a friend of Camilla Parker Bowles, and certainly never had a lesbian relationship with her; the film, in one very suggestive scene, implies that Georgiana and Elizabeth were more than just good friends. The film itself does not play up the Diana angle as much as the marketing campaign did, although there is one obvious reference when it is said that every man in England is in love with Georgiana, except her husband- a remark often made about Diana herself.
After "Pride and Prejudice" and "Atonement", Keira Knightley has inherited the office of Britain's Official Costume Drama Queen, once held by Helena Bonham Carter. (Helena has abdicated to take up the position of Tim Burton's Muse). I would not agree that this is Keira's best performance- that remains "Atonement"- but it is nevertheless a good one. Her Georgiana is a tragic character, passionate and high-spirited, but trapped by the rigid conventions of her age and of her social class. When I first saw Keira as Lara in the television "Dr Zhivago" her voice and mannerisms reminded me strongly of Diana, so her casting here is perhaps appropriate. (There were three people in Zhivago's marriage as well, although in that case Lara was the Camilla-figure).
Eighteenth-century female portraits, especially of aristocratic ladies, can often seem rather anonymous, revealing little of the sitter's individual personality, and I think there is a reason for this. The ostentatious fashions of the day, especially those massive, ridiculously over-elaborate wigs, seem to have been designed to draw attention, not to the looks of the woman wearing them, but to the wealth of the husband, lover or father who had paid for them. (The early nineteenth century was to see a sharp reaction against this type of fashion; Georgiana's daughters would doubtless have dressed far more simply and elegantly than their mother, allowing their individual looks to shine through). It is therefore a tribute to Keira's beauty that, even when dressed in the riotously exuberant height of Georgian fashion, she still manages to outshine the clothes she is wearing.
There are good supporting performances from Hayley Attwell as Elizabeth and Charlotte Rampling as Georgiana's mother, although I felt that Dominic Cooper was rather bland as Grey. Unlike one reviewer, however, I did not think he was too young for the part- indeed, if anything, he was too old. In reality Grey was seven years younger than Georgiana, whereas Cooper is seven years older then Keira Knightley. Had Grey been as old as the character shown in this film, he would have been eighty when he became Prime Minister in 1830.
The real star, however, is Ralph Fiennes, often a great villain- he was the Nazi commandant in "Schindler's List" and Lord Voldemort in the "Harry Potter" films. His Duke, however, although deeply unsympathetic, is not quite a villain in that sense. He is cold and unemotional, obsessed with position and status. His extra-marital affairs- apart from Elizabeth he seduces one of the maids at Chatsworth and fathers an illegitimate daughter by her- are not motivated by love or, probably, even by lust- he is too much of a cold fish for that. They are, rather, an expression of his power- he seduces Elizabeth by offering to use his influence to help her recover custody of her children from her estranged husband. His treatment of his wife, including marital rape, is motivated by the same desire for power over others. Yet one senses in Fiennes's performance that even the Duke, as much as his Duchess, is a victim of social conventions, that he is unable to express love and other emotions because he has never learned how to do so. There is often an emotional reserve about Fiennes' acting, which in my view makes it difficult for him to play a romantic hero like Bendix in "The End of the Affair". (In that film I thought he would have been better as the cuckolded husband, Henry). In a part like the Duke, however, he is perfect.
The film falls within the British "heritage cinema" tradition, although unlike most films in that tradition it is based upon historical fact rather than fiction. As with most heritage films, it aims at a faithful reproduction of the period, especially the costumes, and was filmed against a backdrop of some of England's grandest stately homes, including Chatsworth, the ancestral home of the Devonshires. (Unfortunately, their London mansion Devonshire House was demolished after the First World War, so Somerset House was used instead for the London scenes). Saul Dibb, however, seems to have been aiming for something different from the classic Merchant-Ivory "heritage look". "The Duchess" with its muted colours, is comparatively subdued; perhaps Dibb felt this was more appropriate as, for all the fine clothes on display, it is essentially a film about emotional suffering. 7/10