Rush brings The Marquis de Sade to vivid life in an acting tour de force. Kate Winslet's unquestionable beauty never gets in the way of a totally captivating performance. Michael Caine is simply marvelous as the film's requisite antagonist, but then again, I expect nothing less from Caine. Generally, the image is very nice looking, as well as offering up a good level of detail. In addition, the photography deploys a naturalistic lighting scheme, which causes the darker interiors to appear less defined than sequences with better sources of light.
Colors are very subdued and they take on a very neutral appearance.
Flesh tones lack the modern sensibilities of appearing exceedingly healthy, so I would imagine their pallor being historically accurate. Blacks are deep, although the film's lighting does muddy up the level of shadow detail in places. Despite this, the image does maintain a good sense of depth. Clean dual layer authoring precludes noticeable digital compression artifacts. The Dolby Digital 5.1 channel soundtrack has a very good mix that is appropriate to the material.