The Duchess

Perhaps I’m a sucker for plausible English Heritage productions, but I liked Saul Dibb’s film more than most. I discerned minor anachronisms in dialogue and attitude, but nothing like Becoming Jane or the most recent Pride and Prejudice. Meanwhile, the costumes and locations were enough to earn my endorsement. But beyond that, I found the film credible in the manner of (if a notch below) Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, making an 18th-century proto-celebrity intelligible and alive to a modern audience without excessive dumbing-down. As Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Keira Knightley is more appealing to me than she has been since Bend It Like Beckham, and manages to carry off the enormous hair-dos and confining dresses. She is taken in marriage (a most appropriate phrase) by the older Duke, one of the most powerful men in Britain and patron of the Whig Party in the 1780s. Ralph Fiennes gives the imperious cold fish many subtle shadings. The unhappy Duchess becomes the star of the Party and of Society, in a manner that is not too explicitly dependent on the fate of her descendent, Lady Di. Among her attendants are Charles Fox, the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (School for Scandal is inspired by her), and future Prime Minister Charles Gray. Meanwhile, she invites a distressed lady friend into her home, and then has to deal with the divorced woman’s continuing relationship with the Duke, while pursuing her own affair and affairs. This is my idea of adult entertainment. And at just over a hundred minutes, it does not overstay its welcome, a rarity these days. (2008, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-62.)