Starring: Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Dominic Cooper
Director: Saul Dibb
Category: IIB
Another month, another British heritage film with Keira Knightley in the lead - and a disappointing one at that.
Admittedly, The Duchess is a more lavishly costumed and emotionally engaging piece than The Edge of Love - John Maybury's stylish but vacuous offering in which Knightley plays Dylan Thomas' childhood sweetheart-turned-confidante. But Saul Dibb's take on the life of the late 18th-century British aristocrat and socialite Georgiana Cavendish remains frustratingly unsatisfying, with the film's writers reducing the Duchess of Devonshire's multi-faceted life to a cipher through which the spirit of a more contemporary blueblood - Diana, Princess of Wales - is conjured.
Knightley and her fellow cast members can hardly be faulted for The Duchess' main flaw; she and Ralph Fiennes, who plays the brutally chauvinist Duke of Devonshire, deliver performances that deftly reflect the angst which drives their characters.