Film Night: The Duchess

[erastes]

Well, I liked it - but there were reasons why I didn't too.  All in all I'd recommend it for the reasons I did like it, but I felt a little let down in many ways - on reflection, that is. As the credits came up I had a feeling of "i enjoyed that."  Confused?  Yes. Me too.

Pros: 

* Lovely lovely lovely costumes and coaches and the real settings
* Beautiful photography which either used natural and candlelight or mimicked it completely
* Ralph Fiennes
* Horsies!
* Fabulous room dressing.
* Charlotte Rampling

Cons:
* Far Far Far Far Far Far Far Far Far Far Far Far Far too many close-ups on Ms Knightley.
* The 18th century shown as wonderfully clean-even the peasants!
* Ms Knightley's acting, basically it looks like someone once told her that she can act with her eyes, and really - she ought to try and start doing it with her whole body.  There was only part of the film where she actually made me feel for her.
* The obvious heavy handed attempt (with the poster, primarily "there are three of us in the marriage") to echo the Charles and Di thing.  They were even going to have them marry in St Pauls, but Fiennes (who had read the book, and others of course, being him) said that wasn't a good idea and they listened to him.  It's nothing like Charles and Di. Many people don't even know that it was a true story.
* I really couldn't get involved with her affair with Charles Grey because he looked too much like Regency Blackadder right down to the eyebrows. I kept expecting him to produce Baldrick at any moment.

I think I would have liked it to focus more on what she did politically and socially rather than it all being about the ménage-a-trois and the love affair, she was really a fascinating woman and this film portrays her as little more than a pretty dress-up doll.  It started well, when she began to have a conversation with Mr Charles Fox, at dinner and I thought we'd see more of that, but sadly not. 

It's a BBC film, so it'll probably be on the box pretty soon, save your pennies and get the DVD or wait till the TV shows it.

Does anyone else thing that Ellora's Cave website is very difficult to navigate? You search for "historical", you get a load of covers with naked men.  You search for "gay" you get a load of covers with naked men.  It's impossible to see which ones are gay and or historical and there aren't enough hours in the day for me to click on every cover to find it's either a contemporary or heterosexual because it's just impossible to tell!!

Oh - and Torchwood fans?  Don't miss the special radio episode to be aired on the day that the Large Hadron Collider fires up.