Sight and Sound
"Knightley, who's in virtually every scene...rises to the challenge with more skill and emotional range than she's hitherto been given credit for." 09/01/2008 p.57Rolling Stone
3 stars out of 4 -- "[T]he film belongs to Knightley. There's a fire in her eyes that won't be extinguished, and it keeps us in her corner....It's Knightley who makes THE DUCHESS a royal treat." 09/18/2008 p.117 Empire
4 stars out of 5 -- "The cast and period are immaculately turned out, and events roll at an assured, stately pace..." 10/01/2008 p.60 Los Angeles Times
"[T]he film, impeccably shot by cinematographer Gyula Pados on location in a variety of British stately homes, is as handsomely mounted and beautifully costumes as anything you could as for." 09/19/2008 USA Today
"[E]ntertainingly and sumptuously told....The cinematography is stunning, with gorgeous costumes and a sweeping score. All of this is capped by compelling key performances." 09/19/2008 Entertainment Weekly
"[Fiennes] develops a beautiful, wordless vocabulary of hurt, frustration, sadism, lust...and unanalyzed pain for his Duke....The actor creates particulars of time, space, class, and personality with one crook of a finger, one twist of a wrist." -- Grade: B 09/26/2008 p.64-65 Chicago Sun-Times
"THE DUCHESS is a handsome historical film, impeccably mounted....It is about hard realists, constrained in a stifling system and using whatever weapons they can command. It is rather fascinating on that level..." 09/25/2008 The Onion A.V. Club 8 of 10
In Saul Dibb's The Duchess--adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from Amanda Foreman's biography Georgiana--Keira Knightley plays the duchess as a freethinking fashion plate, admired by the ladies of London for her sense of style and her insistence that there's no such thing as "freedom in moderation." But her domestic situation tests her public calls for universal liberty, as her husband--played with creepily calm menace by Ralph Fiennes--reminds her that she has no real power in their relationship. He can sleep with whomever he wants, and squelch her ambitions at any time, just by threatening to take away her children...To some extent, The Duchess recalls Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, in that it's about bed-hopping and courtly ritual during a time of revolution. Dibb isn't interested in delivering an audience-unfriendly art film, though. His Duchess is 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. Knightley's brand of muted iconoclasm has always been well-suited to just these kind of coach-and-corset movies, and as a result, the story of her character's fall from idealism to practicality becomes fairly moving. Dibb and company make too much of the parallels between Georgiana's story and that of her most famous descendent, Lady Diana Spencer, but at the same time, the "ironies of fame" material works well--not because of its specific application to the aristocracy, but for how it relates to the commoners. - Noel Murray
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
"The Duchess" is a handsome historical film, impeccably mounted, gowned, wigged and feathered, where a husband and wife spend hours being dressed in order to appear at dinner to argue about whether the mutton is off. With Keira Knightley playing the duchess and Ralph Fiennes playing her husband, such a conversation is a minefield. The man has no conversation, addresses her primarily to issue instructions and is obsessed with the production of a male heir, who would have much to inherit, including the grandest private house in London, and Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, the favorite of all British country houses...I deeply enjoyed the film, but then I am an Anglophile. I imagine the behavior of the characters will seem exceedingly odd to some viewers. Well, it is. William is a right proper bastard without normal feelings -- a monster. How do you make love with the fifth Duke of Devonshire? You close your eyes and think of the sixth Duke of Devonshire. Georgiana puts up with more than we can imagine. When we see her tender and playful in the company of Earl Grey, it is a refreshing change. We do not see William and Bess bedding each other, and just as well. We hear them...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. It is rather fascinating on that level, although I would have loved to learn more about what the Whigs at that formal dinner really thought about Charles Fox's vision of the rights of man and the abolition of the slave trade. - Roger Ebert
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