Costume and Physical Beauty

Rating: 8/10 (22 April 2009)

I despise the idiots who think that Keira Knightley can play a beautiful woman of any time period before 1980, so despite the fact that I have read a number of books about Georgiana and despite the fact that the time period is one of abiding interest to me, I was not going to watch this film. However, I could not resist the lure of the costumes and so finally I capitulated.
The costumes are often very wonderful and although KK looks like a badly-put-together praying mantis in some of the outfits and hairstyles (particularly the early ones and the taller hairstyles, less so in the hedgehog variations which she quite suits to a 21st century eye) and although she does not resemble Lady Georgiana in the slightest, she does a very credible job of portraying the characteristics of Georgiana as most historians understand her to have been.
Unfortunately, even when she looks divine in an outfit, she still looks nothing like the person whom she is portraying nor like someone who would not be pitied for her face in the time period in which she is supposed to be representing a great beauty.