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The Duchess

2008

Saul Dibb

Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Charlotte Rampling, Aidan McArdle ...

6.2

7,524

Drama A chronicle of the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who reviled for her extravagant political and personal lives. Long before the concept existed, the Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightley), was the original "It Girl." Like her direct descendant Princess Diana, she was ravishing, glamorous and adored by an entire country. Determined to be a player in the wider affairs of the world, ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Manohla Dargis The New York Times	"An overstuffed, intellectually underbaked portrait of a poor little rich girl."	NEG
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"The film, directed perfunctorily by Saul Dibb, underlines every parallel it can find between Georgiana and Princess Diana (...) It's Knightley who makes The Duchess a royal treat (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Justin Chang Variety	"[It] reveals little about how Georgiana Spencer Cavendish became one of 18th-century London’s most celebrated and influential aristocrats (...) Reducing a complex portrait to a prototypical tale of passion suppressed"	NEG
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"I deeply enjoyed the film (...) It is about hard realists, constrained in a stifling system and using whatever weapons they can command. It is rather fascinating on that level (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United Kingdom	Sukhdev Sandhu Telegraph	"There's no bite or edge to this narrative; it's just another vaguely emancipatory costume affair in which the themes (...) the baddies (...) and the drama (...) lack complexity or subtlety."	NEG
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"What is frustrating is that the movie does not give Knightley much of a chance to show the progression of her character (...) [It] looks good, but there is something exasperatingly bland and slow-moving (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"	NEG
United States	Noel Murray AV Club	"The story of [the] character's fall from idealism to practicality becomes fairly moving"	POS

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