Georgiana fails to give the Duke a son, instead giving him two daughters and a string of miscarriages, leading the Duke to carry out a series of extramarital affairs, one of which produces another daughter that he asks Georgiana to raise along with his other two daughters. Eventually, this leads Georgiana to seek out her own relationship with Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), the eventual Prime Minister of England. However, for all the happiness the relationship brings her, it also threatens to destroy both she and Charles' lives.
I have this odd habit of researching people after watching movies based on their lives. More times than not, I end up discovering that either the movie was completely wrong or skipped the good parts. The Duchess does the latter. The Georgiana Spencer portrayed in the movie is an interesting figure, but the real Georgiana was even more interesting. The movie touches on her role as fashion trendsetter, but it barely recognizes that she was both a compulsive gambler (leading to massive debt despite her wealth) and alcoholic. Not knowing this doesn't ruin the movie, but at the same time, it would have elevated the movie to something more than a by-the-numbers period piece. It's a great by-the-numbers period piece, but at the same time, it doesn't do much to distinguish itself from similar movies.
Aside from the costuming, the one area that propels the film above other films in the same genre is the acting. I'm a fan of both Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes and both put on great performances throughout. I was particularly impressed with Fiennes, who manages to take a villainous role and infuse it with some sort of sympathy for the character. Knightley is outstanding in her role. Even in her happier moments, she is still able to portray an underlying "deadness" in the character. Georgiana's reasons for marrying the Duke aren't particularly noble either as she has interest in the power that comes with a powerful union, making her the architect of her own entrapment.
The Duchess is a little light on extras, most of which are just reproductions of ones that shipped with the DVD version - so you aren't getting much else beyond the crisper picture with the Blu-ray version. The more interesting of the extras is "How Far She Went," which is a making-of feature. It sticks mostly to the film's production, focusing primarily on the costume design and even getting into the actor's heads when it comes to their portrayal of the characters. What I found particularly interesting was the section detailing the 18th Century aristocracy. For all the dreamy "more civilized time" illusions we tend to hold about the period, it was interesting to see that they were just as vice-driven as we are today.
The second feature, "Georgiana in Her Own Words," features biographer Amanda Foreman (whose novel the movie is based on) reading from Georgiana's original letters. Although I was interested in the feature, it needed to be longer. As with the movie's portrayal of Georgiana, there is much more that could have been said about the Duchess that is unfortunately left on the floor. The extras are rounded out with a Costume Diary that describes the intricate costumes featured in the movie.
Although The Duchess doesn't go beyond most other period pieces, it is still an enjoyable movie. It's disappointing that it didn't show more sides of Georgiana's life. Instead of focusing more on a very interesting woman, it tends to retread familiar themes. The lack of Blu-ray exclusive extras makes it hard to recommend that version of the film, but The Duchess is still worth seeing.
