Amanda Foreman's robust, elegant biography, Georgianna, Duchess of Devonshire, receives a cream rinse and a Princess Di job in The Duchess, a Minorpiece Theatre depiction of the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales. Georgianna is a cultivated lass with an independent mind when she marries the fabulously wealthy and politically influential William Cavendish, the fifth duke of Devonshire.
But she's also an intensely hopeful 17-year-old, so she's traumatized when she discovers that the duke is a cold cad who sees marriage as the process by which noble folk produce male heirs. He takes his pleasures with other women; he views his wife as someone to be serviced, even attacked. She finds a creative outlet in setting fashion trends and catalyzing political parlays. Then she meets the dashing, pure Whig politician, Charles Grey.
What saves this movie from utter conventionality is its acting. Keira Knightley, as Georgianna, exudes sexuality even though she's pencil-thin. She's an ideal movie actress, and here she's in her prime: If a great director writes with his camera, a great physical performer like Knightley writes with her body, even when it's encased in billowing gowns. She makes Georgianna's hopefulness so ardent that the duke appears to lack perceptiveness and taste as well as sensitivity and passion. Luckily for the movie, Ralph Fiennes as William fills in the blanks, creating a man who's claustrophobic in his own skin and capable of easy affection only with his dogs - until, alas, he takes a hankering for Georgianna's best friend, Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell).
