The Duchess Critic Reviews

This is not one of those delightful movies based on a Jane Austen novel. It is about hard realists, constrained in a stifling system and using whatever weapons they can command.Read the full review

Thoroughly populist and middlebrow, full of all the high wigs, thick powder, perfect diction, and straightforward dialogue that define bodice-ripping prestige pictures about silently suffering souls.Read the full review

Even surrounded by all this quality work, Ralph Fiennes, who plays William Cavendish, the fifth duke of Devonshire, the most powerful man in England next to the king, walks off with the picture.Read the full review

It tells the amazing, but mostly true, story of a late-18th century aristocrat who made an indelible mark on English society akin to that of her direct descendant, Lady Diana.Read the full review

Princess Diana's antecedent, both genetically and figuratively, was a beautiful and glamorous duchess named Georgiana Spencer. Like her descendant, her charm and vivacity captivated England.Read the full review

It's Knightley who makes The Duchess a royal treat.Read the full review

Fiennes speaks with his body what the script cannot formulate about what it's like to be a man apart. The actor creates particulars of time, space, class, and personality with one crook of a finger, one twist of a wrist. I call that nobility of craft; he's the actors' prince.Read the full review

Keira Knightley is a terrific choice to play the 18th century socialite.Read the full review

At a certain point, The Duchess stops attending to the topiary and becomes a women's melodrama instead.Read the full review