The Breeder

Rating: 6/10 (17 October 2008)

Late in "The Duchess", the motif of royals looking out of windows is completed, when The Duke of Devonshire(Ralph Fiennes) watches his children at play, and says wistfully to his wife, "How wonderful it is to be that free." This duke, who treats Georgianna(Keira Knightley), The Duchess of Devonshire, as nothing more than a breeder throughout their loveless marriage, gets a full pardon from the filmmaker for his deplorable treatment of this duchess. Although it is true that he, like the fairer Devonshire royal, abides by the limits set forth by their respective titles, the duke holds the advantage of being a man, therefore, his imprisonment comes adorned with benefits not made to Georgianna, the woman. While it's easy to wish for the woman's emancipation from her aristocratic duty, the viewer is required to consider the emancipation of the unremorseful philanderer, as well.
The first time that the duke looks out a window, he's a single royal checking out the goods, as Georgianna, who is just some plain ol' heiress at this juncture, entertains mixed company out in the mansion's garden, unaware that the future is being predetermined by her mother, Lady Spencer(Charlotte Rampling), who agrees with the duke that they'd be a prudent match. Within the window frame, Georgianna is thrown into sharp relief as the other guests are made irrelevant by the filmmaker's use of soft-focus. The isolated girl, a projection of the duke's psyche, is not the object of romantic love like Maria(Natalie Wood) was in Robert Wise's "West Side Story", when Tony spots her from across the proverbial crowded room. His feelings about Georgianna can be explicated through the film's use of deep focus, the antithesis of the Classical Hollywood editing style of its day.
In "Citizen Kane", young Charles Foster Kane is outside romping in the snow, blissfully ignorant(just like Georgianna) to the decisions being made indoors, as plans are set in motion for the future newspaper mogul to go away and lead a more fruitful life. Starting on Kane, the camera pulls back to reveal the autocratic grown-ups in the living room, thus negating the need to cut between the interior and exterior action. With deep focus, contrary to the Classical Hollywood editing style, viewers are instilled with freedom; they can choose what to look at. In "The Duchess", the mis-en-scene demonstrates how the duke's freedom is irrevocably taken away from him, by making Georgianna alone, legible to the naked eye, which apes the duke's mind's eye.
Inevitably, the duke sleeps around. The duke, equipped with little, if no scruples at all, sleeps with Bess(Hayley Atwell), Georgianna's best and only friend. The mistress tries to justify her actions by explaining to the duchess that she traded sex for the power that the duke wields. Bess wants her sons back. At the reunion, Georgianna observes the mother and her male-filled arms apart from the other people, the other objects that compose the scene inside her picture frame. Bess is in focus, because the duchess believes her alibi, since being a mother of an heir, a boy, is the highest role that a woman could aspire to fulfill during their day. However, Bess stays on, occupying a seat at the far-reaching dinner table's midpoint. It's a weakness of "The Duchess" that the screenplay doesn't get to the heart of Bess' feigning neutrality: Is the court-wrecker truly in love with the Duke of Devonshire, or biding her time until she can assume Georgianna's title?
The relationship between Georgianna and Bess echoes the two women in Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple", when Bess, the other woman, like Shug Avery, explains to the love-deprived wife that there's pleasure in sex, as Georgianna experiences her first orgasm, like Celie, through the ministrating fingers of the more worldly woman. In the Walker novel, Shug leaves Celia's abusive husband, but Bess' interest in the duke never wavers. "The Duchess" seems dishonest about Georgianna's friend; she's a lot more treacherous than the film lets on. Both lovers behave so badly towards Georgianna, "The Duchess" annoys by excusing the duke's transgression because of social and political obligations. In that final window, the entire garden scene is in focus; following the logic of his mind's eye and the coinciding use of soft-focus to mimic his interior life, if "The Duchess" wanted to redeem this bastard, the filmmaker should have borrowed a page from Steven Spielberg and allow Georgianna to be with Charles Grey(Dominic Cooper), just like how Mister(Danny Glover) reunited Celie(Whoopi Goldberg) with her sister at the end of the film version of the Alice Walker novel.