Suffer, suffer, suffer

Rating: Null/10 (27 August 2011)

I wonder if I will be considered as having written a spoiler if I hereby give away the whole "plot": The duchess suffers. Then she suffers again. A little while later, she suffers some more. That's it. I enjoyed watching this movie in a passive sort of way for the beautiful architecture and interiors and the ravishing costumes. But there is no drama and no characterisation. The duchess is first a naive girl, then a spirited girl. The duke is a cold, selfish bastard. That's it. You can feel sorry in a detached sort of way for the duchess, but since the whole movie does it seems superfluous for the viewer to do so as well.
The script is not embarrassing, but neither is it very ingenious, and in several places the modern sensibility beneath the surface bursts out in the form of anachronisms typical of our age of self-aggrandisement.