Movie Review The Duchess

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Spoiler alerts 2008 A rather sad but beautifully acted historic drama with a sense of tragedy. In the late 18th century the young Georgiana Cavendish (Kiera Knightley) finds herself pressed into an arranged marriage with the wealthy and influential 5th Duke of Cavendish (Fiennes). Sadly, he never loved her. He just wanted her to give birth to a legitimate male heir for him. Sadly, for many years, she suffered miscarriages and had two daughters, while the Duke openly indulged in affairs and moved in the illegitimate daughter from one relationship, expected Georgiana to raise the child. When Georgiana befriends Lady Bess Foster and invites the homeless lady to live with her and the Duke, the Lady and the Duke have an affair right under her nose. Lady Bess reasons that she is working to a reunion with her own children who she is forbidden from seeing. Women were treated appallingly by the aristocracy at this time. After Georgiana finally gives birth to a son, her husband is willing to allow her to have an affair of her own until she sets her sights on Charles Grey, a rising light of the Whig (Liberal) party and a future British Prime Minister. In protest at the affair, the Duke rapes his own wife and refuses to let her leave the family estate. When Georgiana tells him he is pregnant to Charles Grey, the child is cruelly taken off her and given to the Grey family so they can raise her. Later the people involved come to a more peaceful understanding with one another but this is only conveyed in captions as the credits role. The Duchess was an ancestor to Diane, Princess of Wales, also seen as trapped in a loveless marriage. A sumptuous, slow moving but compelling story that really shows Knightley can act. Arthur Chappell