movies: the duchess

There are those people who hate Keira Knightley, and there are those people who love her (I'm not sure there's actually anybody in between)... and I'm definitely one of the latter, so I quite enjoyed The Duchess.

Which isn't to say that just because I like an actor I'll always like everything they're in, but this was actually pretty good. And I thought that Keira did an excellent job... she's sad, she's stylish, she's emotive, she's passionate... and at no point does she look like a stick figure.

In a lot of ways the movie doesn't really feel like anything I haven't seen before... but I have a weakness for movies involving big wigs, corsets, wide dresses and jacked up cleavage, and some of the themes that run through this movie are slightly similar to Marie Antoinette, although this movie is about a billion times better than that.

And because I'd read something somewhere about the movie having parallels with Princess Diana (and the fact the main character is distantly related to her), I could very much see the similarities... the fame, the clothes, the husband with a mistress, the unhappiness... but I'm not completely sure that if I hadn't read about it that I would have made the comparison on my own. Maybe, but the movie stands on it's own quite well without feeling like it's leaning too heavily on any modern links.

Surprisingly for a Big Wig And Corset movie, I think I got more lost in the story (and possibly some of the locations) than I did in the outfits... which is rare for me. I mean, yes, I remember a couple of them, but my attention was held elsewhere.

Ralph Fiennes plays the suitably nasty husband, although there is an odd but effective scene at the end of the movie... but I spent a large amount of time wanting Keira to be very inappropriate to the timeframe and just throw something at his head.

I'm not sure that it's a happy movie... in a lot of ways it's probably quite depressing, the titular Duchess, Georgiana, is completely boxed into her role in society... and with an uncommunicative husband that is equally trapped by his own role... it doesn't make for big laughs or high spirits.

But it still manages to end on, if not a high note, then a note of hope... and I would say that it's definitely worth a look.

yani's rating: 2 corsets out of 5