You'll spend a lot of time in The Duchess wondering if the film has a point.
Comment
10/10/08
The Duchess (2008)
61
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:158
Fresh:96
Rotten:62
Average Rating:6.2/10
Consensus: While The Duchess treads the now-familiar terrain of the corset-ripper, the costumes look great and Keira Knightley's performance is stellar in this subtly feminist, period drama.
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins
Genre: Dramas
US Box Office: $13,823,741
Synopsis: After PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and ATONEMENT, Keira Knightley continues her reign as the queen of the period film with this 18th-century costume drama. The corset-clad actress stars as Georgiana... [More]
Starring: Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Charlotte Rampling, Dominic Cooper
Director: Saul Dibb
Reviews for The Duchess
41 - 60 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
Though sumptuous and well-acted -- especially by Fiennes -- the picture fails to establish Georgiana as a figure just crying out for a film treatment.
10/10/08
It's a beautiful period piece that will send you to a bookstore for a better account of the dirt and vice at its core.
10/10/08
A visually sumptuous, emotionally lacerating melodrama.
10/10/08
Within the sphere they've chosen for their story -- really more of a romantic triangle -- it works.
10/10/08
The problem isn't the history that the filmmakers leave in, but how much they leave out.
10/10/08
It’s a curiously inert, workmanlike production: a whole lot of pomp and incircumstance.
10/10/08
The Duchess is largely successful because it manages to offer those degrees of humanity and romance (if not blandness) amidst the rest of its potent, bodice-ripping drama.
10/10/08
Knightley turns in a performance that impresses us with the strength of her character even as we're appalled by the system that produced it.
10/10/08
...a slightly too serious period costume drama
10/10/08
The tightly corseted title noblewoman is less interesting than the tightly wound people who bedevil her.
10/10/08
...has fine performances and is reasonably true to the facts...
10/10/08
If you love stories with powdered wigs and scandal, you won't want to miss "The Duchess."
10/10/08
(U)nless you are a spinster sans a recognizable love life, or someone with little previous knowledge of the genre, everything here will seem rote, baroque, and exceedingly dull.
10/09/08
[Knightley's] credible performance is definitely one of the best things about this handsome looking-but-inconsistent biographical drama.
10/09/08
The Duchess is clearly Knightley's movie, ultimately rising or falling on her performance. She's up to the task, capturing both the charm and grace that made Georgiana so captivating.
10/09/08
Hums with the rhythms of some of the better Merchant Ivory films.
10/09/08
Dibb and his two co-writers are far more concerned with all the tiresome drawing-room melodrama than they are with Georgiana's influence on society.
10/09/08
The Duchess is an intelligent and compelling period drama that offers a critical examination of the lot of women and the abuses of men in a time when such behavior was standard and acceptable.
10/08/08
The film starts off strong and slowly peters out by the end
10/06/08
Latest News for The Duchess
January 07, 2009:
People's Choice Awards Winners Announced
The 35th annual People's Choice Awards were handed out on January 7, 2009. A complete list of film nominees, with winners in bold, follows below. More...
January 03, 2009:
Not just another royal goddess in a gilded cage costume drama, the film couldn't be more current now, when women bidding for the highest political offices are told to go home and take care of their kids or iron male shirts. Sexual subversion in corsets. 
More...
December 28, 2008:
Not just another royal goddess in a gilded cage costume drama, the film couldn't be more current now, when women bidding for the highest political offices are told to go home and take care of their kids or iron male shirts. Sexual subversion in corsets.
More...
October 12, 2008:
Emarketingmag.com: Not just another royal goddess in a gilded cage costume drama, the film couldn't be more current now, when women bidding for the highest political offices are told to go home and take care of their kids or iron male shirts.
More...
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