Category: Costume drama

The Young Victoria (2009)

Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend play the royal couple in the cozy The Young Victoria

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée

Cast: Emily Blunt (Queen Victoria), Rupert Friend (Prince Albert), Paul Bettany (Lord Melbourne), Miranda Richardson (Duchess of Kent), Mark Strong (Sir John Conroy), Jim Broadbent (King William IV), Harriet Walter (Queen Adelaide), Thomas Kretschmann (King Leopold), Jesper Christensen (Baron Stockmar), Jeanette Hain (Baroness Lehzen), Julian Glover (Lord Wellington), Michael Maloney (Sir Robert Peel), Michel Huisman (Prince Ernest), Rachael Stirling (Duchess of Sutherland)

Now ITV’s Victoria exists, it’s a bit strange to go back and watch The Young Victoria. With the love today of long-form drama, and the time it can invest in things, it’s funny to see what the drama took almost 8 hours to do being crammed into an hour and a half here. But saying that, The Young Victoria is still an entertaining, luscious viewing experience which, while it has some strange ideas about certain events, is the sort of relaxing Sunday afternoon viewing that will take you out of yourself.

After the death of William IV (a slightly overripe Jim Broadbent), Victoria (Emily Blunt) is elevated to the throne. Finally able to shed the control of her mother’s (Miranda Richardson) domineering secretary Sir John Conway (Mark Strong), Victoria is determined to steer her own course. But she is surrounded by competing influences, not least from the charming arch-politician Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany). King Leopold of Belgium (Thomas Kretschmann) dispatches his nephew Prince Albert (Rupert Friend) to England with the express interest of marrying Victoria and controlling her – but Albert and Victoria find themselves as kindred spirits, supporting each other to rule.

The Young Victoria is the epitome of prestige costume dramas. It looks fantastic, the cinematography is ravishing, the production and costume design exquisite. It’s pretty clear what the producers thought would sell the picture abroad. The royal regalia is pushed very much to the fore, and we get some wonderfully sweeping scenes, not least an impressively large-scale coronation. The soundtrack brilliantly riffs on Handel, and Julian Fellowes’ script mixes period regal style with a sweeping feeling of romance between Victoria and Albert.

The film actually does a very good job of repositioning Victoria as a young woman, and gives her a strong quality of self-determination and a desire to be herself in a man’s world. It’s really helped in this by the combination of imperial strength, girlish wilfulness and sharp intelligence Emily Blunt brings to the role. Blunt and the film also aren’t afraid to show that, however much Victoria had guts and determination, she was also quite a headstrong woman not above making emotionally led mistaken decisions. In fact, much of the drama spins out of Victoria learning to try and put these youthful crushes and prejudices aside.

Having said that, it’s interesting that the successful conclusion of the film centres on Victoria accepting that she needs the help of Albert to run the kingdom, and that she needs to remove competing influences for her affection – Melbourne and Lehzen – to focus her affection and loyalty on him. The film frames this as a winning romance and a successful partnership (which it was) – but it’s also vaguely creepy if you think about it. Mind you, since all the affectionate influences on Victoria are implied by the script to be at least partly motivated by self-interest, with the possible exception (eventually) of Albert, it manages to suggest this was for the best.

Albert’s background gets some interesting exploration here. He’s very much presented at first as the tool of Leopold as a means of controlling British politics. But he is far too independent, smart and noble to ever be the means of manipulation. Friend is very good here – his performance is quiet, authoritative but also heartfelt. Fellowes guilds the lily a bit to show his devotion by having Albert shot by a would-be assassin late-on in the film. Historically the assassin’s pistol wasn’t loaded, and Albert didn’t get shot (though Fellowes protests Albert didput himself in front of Victoria and that this intent is what’s important, not whether he was shot or not) but the moment does work – it gives the drama a boost and it’s undeniably moving.

While Albert is presented overwhelmingly sympathetically, interestingly Lord Melbourne gets quite a kicking. Paul Bettany is presented far more as a rival love interest than the sort of father-figure Melbourne was in real life (Bettany is probably 20 years younger than the real Prime Minister). Melbourne is shown as cynical, controlling, manipulative and overwhelmingly motivated by self-interest (a few more pushes and he would virtually become the film’s villain). He’s constantly contrasted negatively with Michael Maloney’s upright, honest Sir Robert Peel (one of my favourite statesmen of the 19th century so at least I’m pleased) – and his relationship with Victoria is one of self-promotion, which seems odd seeing as historically the two of them were so close. 

The film introduces other villains for us to hiss at. Kretschmann and Christensen do a good job as arch political schemers. Our real villain though is Mark Strong, who does a great job of scowling, controlling nastiness as the failed-bully Sir John Conroy. Strong’s performance works so well because he makes it clear that Conroy feels that his “Kensington System” (an attempt to manipulate and cow Princess Victoria into being a submissive puppet) is genuinely in her best interest, and that he genuinely cares for her. His partnership with Miranda Richardson as Victoria’s near-love-struck mother works very well.

The Young Victoriathrows in enough interesting character beats like this for it to really work as an enjoyable afternoon period-drama. With some great performances – Emily Blunt carries the movie brilliantly – and while some of the historical characterisation is a bit off, and other moments feel a little too chocolate box it’s a very entertaining, undemanding view., it’s great fun. The hardcore Victorian costume-drama fans will probably prefer Victoriafor the same story in more depth – but this film does it with great sweep (and doesn’t cram in Victoria’s stupid below-stairs plotlines!).

Pride and Prejudice (2005)


Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen are drowned in the shadow of the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice

Director: Joe Wright

Cast: Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Bennet), Matthew Macfadyen (Mr Darcy), Brenda Blethyn (Mrs Bennet), Donald Sutherland (Mr Bennet), Tom Hollander (Mr Collins), Rosamund Pike (Jane Bennet), Carey Mulligan (Kitty Bennet), Jena Malone (Lydia Bennet), Talulah Riley (Mary Bennet), Judi Dench (Lady Catherine de Bourgh), Simon Woods (Mr Bingley), Tamzin Merchant (Georgiana Darcy), Claudie Blakely (Charlotte Lucas), Kelly Reilly (Caroline Bingley), Rupert Friend (Mr Wickham), Penelope Wilton (Mrs Gardner), Peter Wight (Mr Gardiner)

I’ve written before about certain books having been adapted so successfully there feels very little point rolling out another. If ever an adaptation set this principle, it’s the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Not only did it perfectly capture the spirit and style of the book, with perfect scripting and direction, but the two lead actors – Jennifer Ehle and especially Colin Firth – were simply perfect (for all his achievements, the first line of Firth’s obituary will forever be “Darcy Dies”.)

So Joe Wright and his team were already climbing a mountain when they announced plans to make a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s most beloved novel. What they’ve produced in the end is a well-made, handsomely mounted film full of visual invention – that has been pretty much rejected by nearly everyone I know who loves Austen. It’s a film that, in attempting to plough its own furlough, has ended up not really pleasing anyone: for the casual viewer it’s an entertaining but forgettable watch. For the Austen fan it’s just plain not right.

Structurally the film places Elizabeth’s relationship with Darcy slap bang at the centre, and has little to no interest in anything else. This leads to major themes and relationships being neglected or outright abandoned in some bizarre cut choices. The film wants to front-and-centre Lizzy’s increasing isolation – so Jane is dispatched from the film for almost over an hour. Even more oddly, Wickham is cut down to a few spare scenes – which makes her passionate sympathy for him and anger against Darcy make very little sense. All this isolation also means we never really understand the social implications and importance of marriage – in fact the whole thing is basically turned into a Cinderella romance: Rich Man Meets Poor Girl (And No One Else Matters). 

Which means a lot of the focus for the film lands on Keira Knightley. Is there a more controversial actor in film than Knightley? Oscar-nominated for the role, among my Austen-loving friends I have found only revulsion against her performance. She plays it with spirit but too much of a modern sensibility. She’s fine, but she’s just not convincing: she doesn’t look like her, she doesn’t have her warmth and wit and seems more like she’s wandered in from some sort of “flirty girls” comedy. Nothing really communicates the character’s intelligence and wit – and Knightley probably looks a little too modern for the whole thing to work. 

On top of that the film doesn’t want her to be too unsympathetic at any point, so dials down her judgemental nature, and also reduces any possibility of us judging her partiality for Wickham by mostly removing him from the film. However, this also removes many of the obstacles from the plot that stand in the way of romance.

Matthew MacFadyen does a decent job as “Nice Guy In A Period Drama”, but the character is just wrong for Darcy. Like Lizzy’s tendency to rush to judgement, Darcy’s apparent coldness and snobbery have been watered down to almost invisibility. His first announcement of love is so genuine, so gentle, so loving that you are amazed that Elizabeth dismisses him out of hand. It’s no surprise this Darcy turns out to be a decent bloke, the edges of the character have been completely shaved off. This puts a big old dent in the plot, reduces his character development, and ruins the impact of sweet later moments like Darcy’s uncertainty when the two meet at Pemberley. 

There are some good performances though. Tom Hollander is very funny as a social-climbing Mr Collins. Donald Sutherland gets so much warmth and twinkly good humour out of Mr Bennet that Wright even ends the film on him (another odd choice, but never mind). Judi Dench could play Lady Catherine standing on her head. Rosamund Pike is rather good as Jane – she totally feels right for the period. Brenda Blethyn largely manages to avoid turning Mrs Bennet into a complete stereotype. Saying that, Simon Woods portrays a version of Bingley so bumbling, tittering and awkward you are amazed either Jane or Darcy could be interested in him, let alone bear to spend time with him.

But then large chunks of the film feel odd. The screenplay works overtime to turn the film into a straight-forward star-crossed lovers story: so it’s Darcy and Elizabeth all the way, and the film is desperate to make them both likeable from the off. And if that means that, in a film called Pride and Prejudice, both the pride and the prejudice have to be junked to make sure even the stupidest audience member will like the hero and heroine, well that’s apparently a price worth paying. Lowering the Bennets’ social status as far as the film does, also turns the story into a full-on Cinderella territory. Darcy and Bingley are so posh an entire room falls silent when they walk in – in comparison the Bennets are so poor they share their house with pigs.

Ah yes the pigs. Why? The Bennets aren’t paupers. If they were, why would Collins want the place? Why would they be invited to the ball? Why would Bingley and Darcy even consider them as partners? Why would a family so aware of impressions have a home that is literallyfull of shit all the time? Why is Mr Bennet scruffy and unshaven – and why doesn’t anyone care? Who designed this? If the Bennets are so fixated on getting good marriages why do they literally live in a pig sty? It’s a visual idea that undermines the whole story.

I’m not joking. Here is a pig walking through the Bennet house.

It’s full of things like this that don’t feel right. The film junks most of the language of the original book, which makes it sound jarring (it even re-works Darcy’s first proposal: “in vain I have struggled, it will not do…” – large numbers of Austen lovers I know can recite those lines verbatim. This film apparently thought it could create a better version. It couldn’t). Large chunks of the film happen in the rain like some sort of version of Wuthering Heights. Why is that? Is it because professions of love in the rain are romantic in a Mills and Boonish sort of way? Or is it an echo back to Firth’s wet shirt?

Emma Thompson’s sublime adaptation of Sense and Sensibility demonstrated that it is completely possible to adapt an Austen novel into a two-hour film and still preserve the characters, relationships, major events and themes of the book, while also making a story that stands on its own two feet for non-Austen-ites. This film bungles its attempt to do the same. 

But there are things Wright gets right. The camera work and transitions are lovely. A long tracking shot that weaves in and around the ball early in the film, taking in every single character is not only a technical marvel but really gets across a feeling of what these hectic and bustling social events are like. There is a beautiful time transition at Longbourn, as Elizabeth rotates on a screen and the camera takes on a POV shot, showing the seasons changing each time the camera revolves around through 180 degrees. The cinematography is luscious and Wright – his first film – shows he was more than ready for the step-up from TV.

It’s just a shame that the film they made doesn’t quite work. It doesn’t capture the sense of the book. It doesn’t capture the sense of the characters. It makes bizarre and just plain wrong choices. It’s a decent film, but it is not a good adaptation of the novel. And that’s a major problem, because if you are going to adapt something as widely loved and revered as this, you better bloody well understand the novel – and I don’t think enough people here did. It’s told with a sweeping romantic style – but they are adapting the perception of Pride and Prejudice rather than the actual story. The chemistry and romance aren’t there: the film even ends with an odd sequence of Sutherland and Knightley, probably because there was better chemistry between these two than the two leads. It’s a film that basically doesn’t work at all.

Phantom Thread (2017)


Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day-Lewis play dangerous games in Paul Thomas Anderson’s fascinating film about control, Phantom Thread

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis (Reynolds Woodcock), Vicky Krieps (Alma Elson), Lelsey Manville (Cyril Woodcock), Camilla Rutherford (Johanna), Gina McKee (Countess Henrietta Harding), Brian Gleeson (Dr Robert Hardy), Harriet Sansom Harris (Barbara Rose), Lujza Richter (Princess Mona Braganza), Judy Davis (Lady Balitmore), Philip Franks (Peter Martin)

The last time Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis worked together, we got a true masterpiece in There Will Be Blood. Phantom Thread couldn’t be much more different. In place of rolling plains, oil, and Day-Lewis as a monstrously larger-than-life alpha male, we get confined rooms, handsome dresses and Day-Lewis as a pernickety, obsessive, creepy dressmaker. But Phantom Thread may also be just as intriguing, thought-provoking and memorable in its way as There Will Be Blood.

Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a leading couturier in 1950s London, whose fashions are highly sought after by the rich and famous. He lives and works with his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), who dominates his life – and dispatches his various muses as their use comes to an end. On a break near the coast, Reynolds meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a hotel waitress whom he takes back to London as his latest muse. At first Alma seems to be merely the tool of this fashion Svengali – but Alma has her own desires that quickly spark conflict in the House of Woodcock.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s film has lashings of Daphne du Maurier, Powell and Pressburger (it’s more than a little reminiscent of The Red Shoes) and a slickly inverted Pygmalion. It’s a film that slowly emerges as being about control and the way power relationships can shift and transform. Reynolds at first seems a twisted Henry Higgins: his muses come and go (and, it’s implied, fail to live up to his mother) – he becomes tired of them, and his sister, business partner, factotum and part-time mother-figure Cyril dismisses them when they have served their purpose. 

Reynolds and Alma’s first meeting is one of creepy control. He asks her to memorise his order, wipes her lipstick away so he can “see her” and, in a late night “living mannequin” sequence, dresses her in a series of fabrics and clothes, and offers dispassionate comment about her body. What’s interesting in this sequence though, is that Alma only becomes uncomfortable when Cyril arrives and joins Reynolds in the process. It’s a hint of the developments that will emerge over the course of the film: Alma doesn’t want to share Reynolds.

That’s the tension the film explores from thereon: Reynolds seems to have all the power, but Alma pushes against this to forge her own position as something more than a muse. The film has an acute understanding of the psychology of power in human relationships, which is more than reminiscent of Rebecca: the exact motivations of the characters remain unclear (sometimes even to themselves) until late in the film. The film veers into My Cousin Rachel territory – while giving us a totally unexpected series of emotional developments that spin out of this, which shock but make perfect sense.

That’s because Paul Thomas Anderson has made a sharply observant film about human fallibility and our desire to understand our place in the hierarchies around us, and the unusual paths to contentment that we can find. Like The Red Shoes, it also feels like a film that really understands the psychology of Svengali figures, and adds a Freudian bent to it. Reynolds is looking for a mother to take the place of his own and he is drawn to muses who remind him of her, but who constantly fail to replace her. It’s in the weakness that Reynolds’ perfectionism drives him away from, that he is capable of finding love and happiness.

So the film becomes a series of wonderfully low-key power shifts, many of them revolving around meals. It’s established early that Reynolds demands very precise conditions for his breakfasts – most importantly silence; in every breakfast scene that follows, everything from the loudness of the crunching to the amount of scrapping of jam on toast tells you who is in control. 

Because just as Reynolds wants to craft Alma to take on the perfect muse position for his dressmaking – so Alma wants to craft Reynolds into the perfect combination of high-achieving genius whose success she can vicariously enjoy, and a man who needs her emotionally. Anderson’s brilliant, bitter and waspy screenplay shows the different steps both characters dance through to achieve this. Alma’s solution, and its psychological impact, is brilliantly du Maurier; it’s out there, but makes perfect sense.

Visually the film is beautifully crafted. Anderson shoots a lot of the film with a combination of slow prowling shots, and cameras held at close-up or medium shots that regularly place the actors close to the camera. It means that we always feel like we are right in the middle of the action – looking over the shoulders of actors, or seeing their faces loom into the camera. It obviously creates a claustrophobic feeling, but also one of real intimacy – it’s like the camera is dressing the characters, the same way Reynolds does. But Anderson’s choices pull you closer into the action, and get you really thinking about the psychology of the characters you are watching.

And Anderson wants you to get into the psychology here, because he has cast three actors at the top of their game in this tight-character study. Day-Lewis is of course superb, as a character unnervingly precise and cool – his voice is a perfect combination of icy preciseness, and trembling emotional confusion. Reynolds is in many ways a child – his every whim must be followed, he explodes in foul-mouthed (hilarious) fury at any deviation from his procedures. But he’s also an emotionally stunted man who has never got over the loss of his mother, capable of strong sexual feelings and a yearning for closeness. It’s a subtle, controlled, low-key performance.

But Day-Lewis’ retirement has stolen a lot of the attention from Vicky Krieps, who is sensational as Alma. In many ways, she is the real protagonist of the story. Alma is at first our entry into the story – but we quickly learn we know or understand very little about her. She comes from somewhere in Europe, she may well be Jewish, but Krieps makes her hard to define. Unusual and impossible to understand, Krieps makes her a fascinating character. She emerges as a determined, strong-willed, manipulative figure, looking to have a firm place in her partner’s life – she’s both a toy that bites back, and a woman who will settle for no compromise in what she wants. It’s a fascinating performance. 

Lesley Manville rounds out the cast as the waspish Cyril, deliciously spitting out some cruel lines. Manville is terrific, and Cyril sits in an unusual place in the Woodcock house, partly catering to Reynolds’ demands, partly controlling and positioning him. This makes a perfect foil both for Reynolds’ demanding requirements for a mother, and for Alma’s desire to bring Reynolds under her own influence.

Anderson’s film is a beautiful, fantastically scored, wonderfully acted, intriguing character study, and an insightful exploration of emotional and sexual control and the traps we built for ourselves and for others. It’s a film where every scene is open to interpretation, where both the past and the future seem to haunt events and every resolution leaves questions. It’s a brilliant psychological study that rewards endless thinking, analysis – and I’m sure repeat viewings. I think this one could run and run.

The Woman in Black (2012)


Daniel Radcliffe sneaks round a haunted house in the creepy but not haunting The Woman in Black

Director: James Watkins

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe (Arthur Kipps), Ciarán Hinds (Sam Daily), Janet McTeer (Elizabeth Daily), Liz White (Jennet Humfyre), Roger Allam (Mr Bentley), Tim McMullan (Jerome), Jessica Raine (Joseph’s nanny), Shaun Dooley (Fisher), Mary Stockley (Mrs Fisher), David Burke (PC Collins)

Susan Hill’s 1983 novel is a favourite modern ghost story – not surprising then, after a stage adaptation has been packing them in in the West End since 1987, that it hit cinema screens. Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is a widowed solicitor whose wife died giving birth to their son (now four years old). He is sent to an abandoned house in the countryside to review documents before the property is sold. The villagers nearby are hostile and wish him to leave. At the house he hears strange noises and sees a woman in black starring at him. Gradually the horrific nature of the house, and the curse on it, becomes clear.

The Woman in Blackis an effective and atmospheric scare-a-thon. It feels very creepy, it looks pretty good, it makes very good use of the sort of inherent terrifying nastiness you find in porcelain dolls, music boxes, creaking chairs, chintzy wall-paper and the wind whistling through the trees. It carries a lovely air of foreboding, and the shots (where we get them) of the woman in black herself carry a great feeling of menace and maliciousness. 

What is just as good though is its slim running time, because, effective as its jumps are, they are all structured in the same way. We get the haunted house late at night. We get Daniel Radcliffe walking round it slowly, breathing heavily, the camera carefully following him. We get slow camera movements around rooms until they begin to rest on an object or something appears in the corner of a frame. And then we get a crash of music and something flashes in front of the camera briefly. It’s a standard “boo” haunted house technique. Sure it’s very well pulled off indeed, and works great when it’s happening, but it’s a basic trick, using a sudden noise and distracting movement. 

Its good craftsmanship to make the same surprise (basically) constantly startling – but it’s like being on a rollercoaster. You can see each dip coming time and time again. You know exactly what’s going to happen, that you going to be plummeted down. And then when it happens you still have the adrenaline, driving your fear. But will you be scared after the rollercoaster has finished? Nope. 

That’s where the film’s sort of horror fails. There is nothing really lingering about this. Even when watching it late at night (as I did) it didn’t leave me unsettled five minutes after it finished. Effective horror films – The Shining – leave us with images and ideas that haunt us for years to come. This one barely lasts seconds. Compare it too, say, Blink, the classic Doctor Who episode. This comes up distant second-best. That works because it has a simple but brilliant idea (statues move!) and it has a brilliantly simple-but-very-hard-to-do way to avoid getting caught (don’t blink!). This just has things jump out at you. All the time.

This film is twice as long but has half the scares and dread of that. But all the film-makers can really think to do with this idea of a child-killing ghost is turn it into a “boo” monster. Charles Dickens’ The Signalman uses a premonition ghost like this to ominous effect – the ghost appears, that’s it. That’s all the haunting you need. Do you need the ghost moving around a house jumping out at Radcliffe? Nope. You start to feel the film-makers couldn’t think how to really extend this idea to fill a film (even one as short as 90 minutes), so needed to pad it out with no less than two extended sequences of Radcliffe creeping round a haunted house, sweating.

In the lead Daniel Radcliffe does his best but, to my eyes, seems hopelessly miscast. For starters he is manifestly far too young to be playing the father of a four-year-old child. Secondly, Arthur Kipps’ emotional trauma and depression seem to be just out of Radcliffe’s range – I’m not sure that Radcliffe is quite the actor I think of for world-weary misery. Now he does a decent job, but he neither looks nor feels quite right for the part. 

he Woman in Black is a B-movie done rather well, but a B-movie and nothing more. It exists to spook you and to make you jump. But, if it aspires to anything else, it never achieves it. As soon as it is finished you’ll never feel a need to see it again – and nothing from it will stick with you even an hour later. It’s a good atmosphere piece, but that’s really all it is. It’s as far from giving you a sleepless night as it could get.

My Cousin Rachel (2017)


Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin in a dance of romance and suspicion in My Cousin Rachel

Director: Roger Michell

Cast: Rachel Weisz (Rachel Ashley), Sam Claflin (Philip Ashley), Iain Glen (Nick Kendall), Holliday Grainger (Louise Kendall), Simon Russell Beale (Court), Pierfrancesca Favino (Enrico Rainaldi), Andrew Havill (Parson Pascoe), Andrew Knott (Joshua)

Did she? Didn’t she? That’s the key phrase this deliberately ambiguous film returns to again and again. Is Cousin Rachel a serial schemer, seductress and possible murderer? Or is she just – well I guess just really unlucky? It’s a difficult line to tread –ambiguity is extremely challenging to bring to film, as it’s a medium that’s pretty decisive in what it shows us first-hand. But My Cousin Rachel pulls this off with a creepy aplomb.

At some point in the 1830s, Philip Ashley (Sam Claflin) receives a letter from his cousin and guardian Ambrose, who has recently passed away in Italy. The letter obliquely accuses Ambrose’s wife, his cousin Rachel (Rachel Weisz), whom Philip has never met, of poisoning Ambrose. As Ambrose died before he could prepare a new will, Philip inherits his estate – but still harbours a rage against Rachel, suspecting her of murder. However, when Rachel comes to stay with him, Philip finds himself increasingly drawn towards, and besotted with, her.

Roger Michell gracefully directs and writes this intriguing little mood piece, a fine chamber-piece thriller. With an unsettlingly lyrical score and shot with a beautiful eye for the Cornish countryside, My Cousin Rachel not only grips, but rings true with anyone who has either (a) fallen blindly in love, (b) suffered from romantic obsession or (c) been paralysed with jealousy. Which is probably just about everyone.

The film relies for its success largely on Rachel Weisz’s exceptionally intelligent and thoughtful performance as Rachel. She looks perfect for the role – she’s both the sort of woman men would fall wildly in love with, and old enough to settle into an unsettling, semi-incestuous flirtation with Philip. Her performance works because Weisz plays the part with exceptional skill, never tipping the wink to the audience, but skilfully modulating and adjusting her performance with every scene so that you remain as uncertain about her actions and motives as anyone else.

Apparently Weisz made her own mind up on Rachel’s guilt and innocence, but never told Michell or Claflin. Intriguing to think that while they shot scenes of domesticity or passion, that only one of those involved really knows what’s happening – a mood that totally carries across to the viewer. Weisz plays the part with complete strength of conviction and straightness – every scene is played as if the feelings in it were completely true and bereft of manipulation. She makes it unreadable, while having a face overflowing with emotion and feeling. Does she understand Philips feelings early and manipulate him? Or does she genuinely not expect his romantic intentions?

Michell skilfully shows how Rachel wins over people with ease. Even the dogs immediately gravitate towards her. Parson Parscoe and his family flock around her. Philip’s servants smarten themselves up and make every effort to make a good impression on her. His godfather Nick seems to oscillate continually in his judgement of her, but even he seems powerless in her presence. The camera carefully hovers and focuses in on Rachel, with many shots focusing on her face alone – seducing us as much as the rest of the characters. We almost never see her except in scenes with Philip – so we have the same information as he does for making our minds up.

Sam Claflin is equally key to the film as Philip. In many ways Philip is quite the whiny teenager – you could easily dismiss him as a romantic young idiot, an obsessive would-be Romeo, who makes a series of terrible decisions through listening to his penis rather than his head. But despite that –/ perhaps because his errors and mistakes seem so universal – it’s easy to sympathise with him. Rather than want to slap him anger, you want to do so in frustration – “don’t do that, you idiot!” Michell and Claflin play his increasing disintegration brilliantly. Is it poison? Or is it his increasing jealousy and obsession unhinging him? Who hasn’t been involved in an unequal romantic obsession?

It’s not a perfect film. Philip’s obsession with Rachel is alarmingly sudden – perhaps too sudden. Towards the end, Michell becomes slightly too enamoured with mystery – a final, lingering shot introduces an element of uncertainty about a character we have never had cause to suspect, which feels like a little too much. At times the lingering camera seems to be trying to suggest more in the performance than Weisz seems willing to give away.

But these are quibbles. The film is well-directed and filmed, and terrifically acted – Glen and Grainger are very good in key supporting roles – but it’s a triumph for Rachel Weisz. Weisz seems like an actor it’s easy to overlook, maybe because she has never quite got the star vehicles her talent matches – but this film is a clear reminder that, at her best, she is an extremely gifted performer.

Wilde (1997)


Jude Law and Stephen Fry in a disastrous love affair in sensitive biopic Wilde

Director: Brian Gilbert

Cast: Stephen Fry (Oscar Wilde), Jude Law (Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas), Jennifer Ehle (Constance Lloyd Wilde), Vanessa Redgrave (Jane Francesca Agnes “Speranza” Wilde), Gemma Jones (Sibyl Douglas), Judy Parfitt (Lady Mount-Temple), Michael Sheen (Robbie Ross), Zoë Wanamaker (Ada Leverson), Tom Wilkinson (Marquess of Queensbury), Ioan Gruffudd (John Gray)

Could there be a more perfect piece of casting than Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde? Not only is Fry the spitting image of the famed Irishman, but Fry’s own mercurial talent, his enormous outpouring of novels, articles and screenplays, his skill as a raconteur and his general ubiquitous presence as a personality make him a pretty good modern equivalent of Oscar Wilde. A lifelong admirer of Wilde – and an increasingly vocal proponent of gay rights and mental health awareness – Wilde’s life plugs into many of Fry’s own outlooks on the world. So yeah, perfect casting!

Opening in 1882 with Wilde’s tour of America (he effortlessly charms a group of clichéd “yee-haw!” silver miners – who literally fire their guns into the air in delight at his bon-mots in the film’s crudest touch), the film covers Wilde’s growing career, but focuses on his personal relationships. Unaware of his homosexuality, he marries Constance (Jennifer Ehle), but discovers his true nature with her friend Robbie Ross (Michael Sheen). However, this leads to his destructive, obsessive love for alternately petulant and caring Lord Alfred Douglas (Jude Law), his beloved “Bosie”. When he is accused publically of sodomy by Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensbury (a raging Tom Wilkinson, chewing the scenery), Wilde takes the matter to court – a disastrous decision that destroys his life.

Brian Gilbert’s film is a sensitive and lovingly crafted slice of period drama, that movingly demonstrates the hypocrisy of Victorian values. Wilde is celebrated by the public, despite the open secret of his and Bosie’s relationship, while rent boys (including a one-line appearance from Orlando Bloom!) and discrete gay relationships are common place. Wilde is a gentle, naïve man for whom emotional closeness is more important than physical love. He charms a society only too aware of his nature. However, the instant he causes a stink, his reputation is ruined and his life collapses. What the film does so well is give us a sense of the inner vulnerability, doubt and desire for affection at the heart of a man who, perhaps more than any other, lived his life as a public exhibition.

Halliwell’s Film Guide claimed the film attempted to reposition Wilde as a family man, a grossly unfair view of the film’s stance. As if a man who discovers he is gay could not love his children, or that he could no longer care for his wife. Similarly, accusations that the film shows Wilde’s homosexuality as the roots of his downfall are similarly misguided – Robbie Ross is unaffected by legal troubles and he’s openly gay. No, the film is making a far more conventional (in a way) point – Wilde was brought low because he fell hopelessly in love with the wrong guy.

Jude Law’s big break was in this film – and watching it again is a reminder of what a firebrand, dynamic actor he can be. He makes Bosie half monster, half emotionally vulnerable child. He alternates (sometimes within the same scene) between affection, devotion, kindness and wildly petulant rage. He’s overwhelmingly selfish and self-obsessed – even as Wilde’s life collapses, he can only whine that he is furious his father is winning – but then remorseful and guilt-stricken when the consequences of his actions become clear (but not enough to not do it again). Law juggles all these contradictions with astonishing skill – it’s an assured, magnetic performance of brilliance. We can see why Wilde adores him, while at the same time wanting to wring his neck.

It’s also clear why all the other characters around Wilde find him so appalling. Ross (and Sheen is similarly superb as Wilde’s tragically “friend-zoned” devoted admirer) can’t bear the appalling influence Bosie has, but knows he’s powerless to do anything about it. In one great scene, Bosie haughtily says he knows Ross always hated him, before cruelly saying it’s because Wilde loved Bosie, but Ross was only “one of his boys” – the look of pain on Sheen’s face is brilliantly moving. Wilde himself seems almost sadly (if inevitably) drawn into Bosie’s tastes for casual sex and rough trade – often playing voyeur at these events, while sadly accepting Bosie doesn’t find him physically attractive. Wilde’s basically the victim of an abusive relationship – and the film does a brilliant job of demonstrating why a man otherwise so blessed with intelligence can’t see it.

Julian Mitchell’s excellent screenplay (based on Richard Ellman’s award-winning biography) uses Wilde’s The Selfish Giant as a framing device – subtly comparing Wilde and Bosie respectively to the giant and the child. It also brilliantly constructs a sense of Wilde’s quick wit and staggering intelligence, and provides a host of sparkling cameos for some fine character actors. The production design and photography are spot-on, and while Gilbert may be slightly workmanlike in his filming, he certainly lets the story tell itself.

The focus on Wilde’s family life is also reassuringly different – it’s brilliant to see Wilde’s obvious adoration for his children, and plenty of indication that he was actually (much of the time) a very good husband and father. Mitchell’s script softens Constance’s reaction to Wilde’s conviction (she wasn’t as forgiving and forward-thinking in her views as she seems to be here) but it does mean that we are allowed to see the full story of Wilde’s life, rather than having him defined by his sexuality. Jennifer Ehle also does a marvellous job with very little material, and her quiet dignity and support for her husband (despite her anger at his obsession with Bosie) is very affecting.

But at the centre of all this is that perfect casting of Stephen Fry. In all the rest of his career, Fry will never be better than he is here. His Wilde is intellectual, mildly arrogant, but also naïve, gentle and almost unworldly. His voice is perfect for the aphorisms, and he is really striking physically. Above all though, he brings a deep, emotional empathy to the part – you feel how personal this is for Fry the actor, and you feel how closely he identifies with a man who discovered his sexuality late. His besotted, blind love for Bosie is as affecting as it is frustrating. His vulnerability in Reading gaol is deeply moving. It’s a quite marvellous performance, anchoring a movie that is gentle, kindly, caring and sensitive in exploring the inner life of a very public man.

Pride and Prejudice (1940)

Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson in a just-plain-not-right version of Pride and Prejudice

Director: Robert Z Leonard

Cast: Greer Garson (Elizabeth Bennet), Laurence Olivier (Fitzwilliam Darcy), Mary Boland (Mrs Bennet), Edna May Oliver (Lady Catherine de Burgh), Maureen O’Sullivan (Jane Bennet), Ann Rutherford (Lydia Bennet), Frieda Inescot (Caroline Bingley), Edmund Gwenn (Mr Bennett), Karen Morley (Charlotte Lucas), Melville Cooper (Mr Collins), Edward Ashley Cooper (George Wickham), Bruce Lester (Mr Bingley)
 

There is an expectation that old-school adaptations of literary classics from the Golden Age of Hollywood somehow set the standards of adaptation, that all others will be judged against. That may well be the case with the 1939 Wuthering Heights, among others, but it really isn’t the case with Pride and Prejudice, which is essentially a bastardisation of Austen’s original, as if the book has been humped by Gone with the Wind and we are now watching its offspring.

Do I need to tell you the plot? Well I probably should tell you this movie’s version of it. The Bennet sisters are sassy young things always on the prowl for husbands. Lizzy Bennet (Greer Garson) flirts with the proud Mr Darcy (Laurence Olivier), while her sister Jane (Maureen O’Sullivan) wins the attentions of Mr Bingley (Bruce Lester). But how will pride and prejudice affect the course of true love? Find out in this Aldous Huxley (!) scripted version of Austen’s classic, adapted via a second-rate stage version.

What’s bizarre about this film is how wrong so much of it feels. Now I’m no Austen expert, but even I could see that all the costumes for this production are completely incorrect for the period. Turns out of course that the producers just had a lot of mid-19th century clothing and thought it looked better. Other things feel like low-brow farce: the Bennet sisters and their mother race Caroline Lucas and her mother in carriages in order to be the first to greet Mr Bingley. That’s right, it’s Pride and Prejudice with a horse-drawn drag-race. Who thought that was a good idea? But what can you expect of a film with the tag-line “When Pretty Girls T-E-A-S-E-D Men into Marriage!”? It even takes good lines from the novel and inexplicably rewrites them to make them worse – Darcy’s snobbish and personally hurtful dismissal of Lizzy at the Merryton assembly “I am in no humour to give consequence to young ladies slighted by other men” here becomes “I am in no humour to give consequence to the middle classes”. Why?

I ask you – do these costumes look right?

That’s before you get into the casting. While some of it is pretty good (Edmund Gwenn is very good as an ineffective Mr Bennet, while Mary Boland has a neat line in shrieking as Mrs Bennet) others are downright bad – Bruce Lester is stiff as Mr Bingley, Edward Ashley Cooper is forgettably dull as Wickham, and Melville Cooper hideously overplays as a Collins who seems to have stepped in from a Marx brothers film.

Other parts just feel a bit wrong. Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier as the leads are marvellous actors, but neither of them produces a version of these iconic characters that feels remotely true – or even recognisable. Garson not only looks too old, but she doesn’t have the sense of playful intelligence and spark that Lizzy Bennet needs: she’s more of a slightly aloof tease. Laurence Olivier is reasonably good as Darcy, but the character is re-invented as much softer and more playful from the start, and his willingness to be teased by Lizzy early in the film makes her rejection of him make very little sense.

Their relationship has a flirtatious element throughout, fitting the film’s reimagining of the novel as a sort of romantic comedy in period costume, with elements of Hollywood screwball – but bearing no resemblance at all to the actual relationship Lizzy and Darcy ought to have. At Bingley’s garden party they engage in a playful archery competition (he assumes she’s a novice, she of course is an expert marksman). In itself the scene is good fun, but Darcy’s polite apology and willingness to look a little foolish, means it doesn’t hold together when she condemns him for arrogance. In fact, you’d be pretty hard pressed to identify much pride or prejudice going on at all. The main obstacle to their relationship is shown as Wickham’s denunciation of Darcy – but since Lizzy hasn’t actually seen Darcy do anything particularly bad, it seems particularly forced.

Furthermore, the film makes Lizzy seem like a ditzy schoolgirl, since literally one scene later she has spun on a sixpence and is devoted to Darcy. This is also a flaw of the film’s telescoping of events – within five minutes it feels Wickham elopes with Lydia, then Wickham comes into money, then Darcy reveals his true character, then Wickham and Lydia return. The film rushes through these events, in order to fly towards its artificial happy ending (all the Bennet sisters are given appropriate suitors in a clumsy final shot) without any real sense of Austen, or any real eye for the sort of subtle social satire she had carefully worked into her novels.

The film’s individualist take on Pride and Prejudice does at least distinguish it from other productions I suppose, but it’s terrified of the depths to the story or its characters, and seems to do everything it can to neuter its “bad” characters – Caroline Bingley barely appears, and it’s hard to believe that any reader of the book could picture Lady Catherine as she’s reimagined here: a sort of playful wingman to Darcy’s courtship of Lizzy.

But then this never feels like Austen – it’s got more of an early Gone with the Wind vibe to it, but played as romantic comedy. Lizzy here is an aloof, determined, slightly foolish, but strong-minded Scarlett-O’Hara-lite, while Darcy is a neutered Rhett Butler charmer. The production does everything it can to look like Gone with the Wind in its setting and design. Austen’s social commentary is phased out and replaced with low comedy and bantering lover style dialogue. I suppose as a film in itself, it’s perfectly fine, but as an adaptation of one of the greatest novels of all time, it’s sadly lacking.

Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)


Henry won’t be happy with that girl: stagy adaptation of the Anne Boleyn story Anne of the Thousand Days

Director: Charles Jarrott

Cast: Richard Burton (King Henry VIII), Geneviève Bujold (Anne Boleyn), Irene Papas (Queen Catherine of Aragon), Anthony Quayle (Cardinal Wolsey), John Colicos (Thomas Cromwell), Michael Hordern (Thomas Boleyn), Katharine Blake (Elizabeth Boleyn), Valerie Gearon (Mary Boleyn), Peter Jeffrey (Duke of Norfolk), Joseph O’Conor (Bishop Fisher), William Squire (Sir Thomas More)

Anne of the Thousand Days fits neatly into Hollywood’s obsession of the 1960s: the grand British historical epic, crammed with costumes, old locations and leading Brit actors in beards mouthing “olde English” style dialogue. Some of these films are of course marvellous – A Man For All Seasons being clearly the best – some are merely competent. AotTD falls very much in the latter category. It’s a solid but dry and rather self-important piece of entertainment, more interested in wowing you with its pageantry than moving you with its emotion.

As the film opens, Henry VIII (Richard Burton) considers whether or not to sign Anne Boleyn’s (Genevieve Bujold) death warrant. The film then flashes back to tell us the story of Anne’s rise and fall. Along the way, the usual figures from Tudor history are wheeled out: Wolsey, Catherine, More, Cromwell and assorted Boleyns.  And of course, the whole thing ends with Anne proudly proclaiming her daughter will one day be the greatest queen of England, with quite exceptional clairvoyance given how unlikely that would’ve actually looked at the time.

The main problem is it isn’t sure what it wants to say about its central character. It wants to simultaneously position her as a strong, “modern” woman with her own ambitions but as a woman succumbing to passion. Essentially, it wants to have its cake and eat it: for Anne to understand Henry is far from love’s ideal vision, while not wanting to lose their “Great Romance”. So we have scenes where Anne questions why anyone would want to marry Henry or talks of her desire for peace, and later scenes where she demands the judicial murder of all who refuse to accept the marriage.

And it may want to show Anne as a modern woman, but – frustratingly – it’s only actually interested in her as a romance object. Her modernity is solely expressed in defying her family to try and marry someone other than Henry, and having spirited “I hate you/I love you” sparring matches so beloved of Hollywood. But the film has no interest in her intelligence, her involvement in the Reformation, or how this led into dangerous conflict with the increasingly powerful Thomas Cromwell (here her downfall is solely down to her inability to produce a son, and being jealous of love rival Jane Seymour, here playing the sort of minxy temptress Anne is often accused of being).

And even this simplified, Mills-and-Boon Anne is inconsistent– one minute she’s a sweet young girl bravely resisting her unwanted royal suitor. Then, she’s delighted with the power that comes with allowing the King to court her. Equally suddenly, she falls in love with him (though that scene is so confusingly written it’s initially unclear whether this is genuine or simply a ploy to win back the attention of Henry). Even away from the central “romantic” relationship, her character oscillates – she schemes revenge against Wolsey, but then is too nice to take Hampton Court from him.

Despite this, Genevieve Bujold delivers an excellent performance. The film successfully plays up her youth early on, and she brings the role a lot of passion, fire and intelligence. Her French-Canadian accent also makes perfect sense considering Anne was largely brought up at the French court. Bujold does her best to hold together an inconsistent character and delivers a real sense of Anne’s independence and intellectual strength. Not even she can completely sell the competing visions of Anne the film has, but she does a very good job with what she is given.

Richard Burton was allegedly fairly scornful of his performance, but he is terrific. One area where the film does succeed is repositioning Henry as a proto-tyrant, who literally cannot conceive he is wrong. In a memorable scene, Henry explains that, ruling as he does through God, any thoughts in his head must have been placed there by God, ergo he can never be wrong. If that isn’t a tyrant, I’m not sure what is. Burton’s charisma is perfect for a man who can flip on a sixpence from bonhomie to fury. While Anne’s intellectualism is overlooked, the film does a great job of demonstrating Henry’s intellectual fakery, via his bland and overbearing musical compositions (met with a rapturous response from the court). Lords literally breathe sighs of relief after they leave his presence. Burton may not be an ideal physical match, but embodies Henry’s ruthless selfishness and towering ego.

It’s a shame that, despite having strong performances, the film is not only so confused, but also so flat and dry. Charles Jarrott frames the film with a dull conventionality, carefully letting costumes and production design fill the screen like a dutiful workman. Has he got any really interesting ideas for shooting this stuff, or presenting a routine plot with any freshness? Not really. Instead we get spectacle, and inevitable rundown of events, but no real sense of novelty. It turns the whole thing into a rather slow, reverent slice of British history, dry and stodgy, ticking off events as it goes.

Those events come and go with a confused focus. The foundation of the Church of England is under explained. The fates of several characters are left unresolved – in particular Cardinal Wolsey (an otherwise excellent Anthony Quayle) simply disappears. The final condemnation of Anne is rushed and confused (you would be forgiven for not really understanding who she has been accused of sleeping with, and the alleged incest between her and brother is almost thrown away). Other characters are simplified (despite good performances from their actors):  so William Squire’s More is upstanding and honest, while John Colicos’ Cromwell is dastardly and scheming.

Anne of the Thousand Days is rather old fashioned and probably best watched now as a Sunday afternoon film. It tells a very, very familiar story (how many times have we seen Henry/Anne’s romance on screen before and since) without too much originality, and largely fudges putting together a clear sympathetic portrait of its central character. Having said that, it is well acted and looks wonderful. It’s just also rather dry and far too aware of having an “important” story to tell.

Love and Friendship (2016)


Kate Beckinsale in a true star turn in Whit Stillman’s brilliant Love and Friendship

Director: Whit Stillman

Cast: Kate Beckinsale (Lady Susan Vernon), Chloë Sevigny (Alicia Johnson), Xavier Samuel (Reginald DeCourcy), Emma Greenwell (Catherine Vernon), Morfydd Clark (Frederica Vernon), James Fleet (Sir Reginald DeCourcy), Jemma Redgrave (Lady DeCourcy), Tom Bennett (Sir James Martin), Justin Edwards (Charles Vernon), Stephen Fry (Mr Johnson)

Films based on Jane Austen are hardly a new thing. There have been dozens of productions on film and television of Austen’s biggest hitters (P&P, S&S, Emma…). What a delight therefore to get an Austen adaptation that takes a very different approach and with material much less familiar. Stillman has even renamed the source material (Lady Susan) with the title from another piece of Austen ephemera, making it playfully fit into the famous X & Y titles.

Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) is notorious throughout society as its most outrageous flirt.  After a failed affair with Lord Manwaring, she retreats to the country home of her late husband’s brother Charles (Justin Edwards). There she soon ensnares Charles’ brother-in-law Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel) into an understanding, while simultaneously promoting the marriage of her reluctant daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark) to the wealthy bumbler Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett). Naturally there is outrage left and right.

Watching this film the first question that springs to mind is what has Kate Beckinsale been doing her whole career? Clearly on the basis of this been wasting her talents in umpteen Underworld movies. This film plays to all her strengths: her sophistication, elegance, the intelligence and sharpness she can convey in dialogue, mixed in with a distant quality she has. She’s absolutely on top of her game her as the aloof, completely selfish and manipulative Lady Susan, and bitingly funny. Her A-list status translates perfectly into a cast of largely unknowns: just as she would in real life, she seems to glide amongst the other characters in the film like some demi-god descended from the stars.

Beckinsale is one of the brightest stars in this terrifically dry and witty adaption by Whit Stillman of a little known Jane Austen work (I confess I’d never heard of it before!). The film has a frosty tongue and a sharply observant eye, and delights in the absurdities and eccentricities of the Austen upper middle classes as much as it does the ruthless bitchiness and selfish back-biting of the marriage game. It’s the perfect film to remind everyone that there is so much more to Austen than the lazily inaccurate perception of love and romantic clinches in the rain. Stillman really brings to the forefront her accurate understanding of people, and her sharp satirical eye.

The film fairly canters along – sometimes with such haste that the intricacies of who is related to who and how are a little lost, despite some witty freeze-frames that introduce each character like calling cards – and it’s often blisteringly funny. It has a brilliant mixture of verbal put-downs and catty asides (often delivered with a cool sharpness). The film is not afraid to mix this with some near slapstick absurdity, particularly from an exceptional Tom Bennett whose over-eager, nervously talkative, endearingly naïve Sir James threatens to steal the whole movie. His introductory monologue on the confusion between “Churchill” and “Church Hill” is a show-stopping laugh riot. It all serves to create a wonderfully arch and funny dive into Austenland.

There is a fantastic self-awareness around the whole film which Stillman manages to wear very lightly. It’s a very faithful immersion in Austen’s style and humour, but also leans on the wall of gentle humour at the conventions of lesser costume dramas. It’s a hugely difficult line to walk, but the film never staggers or slackens. It stays tight, taut and the story grows with a warmth and reality while Stillman continues to almost tease the source material.

The final resolution of events manages to feel both surprising and strangely inevitable. It’s a perfect summation for a film that is simply marvellous, brilliantly performed and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Lady Susan is in many ways deplorable, but Stillman avoids all temptation to try and redeem her or to make her into some sort of genuine heroine (“Facts are horrid things” she observes after another accurate condemnation). Stillman expands the implications of Austen’s text to more than hint at secrets behind her final marriage.

Love and Friendship is a terrific film, the best Austen adaptation on screen since Emma Thompson’s virtuoso Sense and Sensibility. It also has the best work of her entire career from Kate Beckinsale, giving the kind of performance which makes you re-evaluate all your impressions of her. Every single moment of the film has a rich emotional depth mixed with hilarity. It’s not just a wonderful costume drama, it’s a wonderful film.

The Duchess (2013)

Keira Knightley in lusciously filmed, but shallow The Duchess

Director: Saul Dibb

Cast: Keira Knightley (Lady Georgiana Devonshire), Ralph Fiennes (Duke of Devonshire), Hayley Atwell (Lady Bess Foster), Charlotte Rampling (Countess Georgina Spencer), Dominic Cooper (Earl Grey), Aidan McArdle (Richard Brinsley Sheridan), Simon McBurney (Charles James Fox)

My main memory of The Duchess is seeing the trailer while watching Mamma Mia in the cinema. The first shot was Keira Knightley’s face, met with an overwhelming groan from the female-dominated audience. There is something about Knightley that seems to get people’s goat.  If you’re one of those who struggle to warm to Knightley as a performer, this probably isn’t going to be the film that changes your mind.

In the late 18th century, Lady Georgiana (Keira Knightley) marries the absurdly wealthy, but older and duller, Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). She wants a meeting of minds. He just wants an heir. The marriage flounders – and gets worse when the Duke in turn starts an affair with Lady Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell), Georgiana’s closest friend. As her home-life becomes a menage-a-trois, with the Duke treating both women as wives (with their agreement) she begins to experience deeper feelings for the dashing Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), an ambitious politician.

So, first things first, Keira Knightley. She does a decent job. She’s pretty good. But, rather like Jonathan Rhys Meyers, it feels like her best is a 7/10 performance. She’s dedicated, she’s really striving here – but always feels like someone trying rather than truly natural and unforced. She brings Georgina’s glamour and does a decent work of her bewildered hurt, but she (and the film) don’t communicate her intelligence and political activism, so she never really develops as a character. You can’t really put your finger on her doing anything wrong as such, it’s just a performance where you always see the acting, and never feel the naturalism.

It’s particularly noticeable here as her two supports – Fiennes and Atwell – are such accomplished performers. In many ways, the film would have been improved with Atwell in the lead. As it is, as the third corner of the triangle, she has just the right mix of guilt, warmth and mercenary self-interest. In a terrific low-key performance, Fiennes manages to turn a character the film always wants to push into being a bullying villain into a man who feels alive, real and often understandable if not (whisper it) even rather sympathetic.

The film is desperate to turn Georgiana into a suffering victim, and to push Devonshire into the role of a domestic despot. But in fact, most of Devonshire’s actions are quite forward thinking: he adopts and cares for his bastard daughter (conceived pre-marriage), he saves Bess’ children and cares for them as his own, he condones a quiet affair from his wife, he treats her with the utmost public respect and allows her to spend time with her son by another man (although this is relegated to a caption at the end). The only problem is he clearly doesn’t love her, while he clearly does love Bess. Hardly able to believe he wasn’t as besotted with Georgiana as the film is, the film works overtime to try and turn someone a little dull, with some surprisingly generous views, into a monster.

In order to make it categorical who is “right” and who is “wrong”, the film chucks in a gratuitous marital rape scene that feels so out of character and over-the-top, it actually makes you step out of the film. Did it really happen? There’s no evidence of it, and it flies in the face of virtually every other action the Duke does in the film. It’s probably also in there to further contrast Georgiana’s joyless couplings with the Duke against her passionate rumpy-pumpy with Dominic Cooper’s Charles Grey (here re-imagined as a penniless adventurer and radical, rather than the son of an Earl) Like Knightley, Cooper has the glamour and dash for the high-class Mills and Boon plot the film is peddling, but fails to convey Grey’s intellect and political ideals.

The film has deliberate echoes of Princess Diana throughout – the crowded marriage, the glamourous outsider marrying into a great family, the sense that her dashing public image made him look like a dullard. And like much of the public reaction to Charles and Diana in real life, the film can’t compute why Devonshire didn’t love this public idol, overlooking the fact that they shared no interests and had nothing in common. Many of Georgiana’s negative aspects are downplayed to help this – the gambling addiction that left her bankrupt is no more than high spirits here.

Basically this is a film interested in style over substance, aiming to turn a fascinating story about a menage-a-trois into something very straightforward and traditional about a husband who treats his wife badly. Now the style is great – Rachel Portman’s score is brilliant, the photography luscious, the make-up and costumes gorgeous – but the substance often isn’t there. The idea of Georgiana’s celebrity is only briefly touched upon, and her intellect barely at all.

Not content with airbrushing out her less appealing characteristics, even her positive ones are done few favours by this candyfloss depiction of her life – one of the first women to take a prominent role in the British political scene, a published writer of novels and poems, and a famously charismatic social figure, here she is little more than a mannequin on which to hang elaborate period hairstyles and costumes, who talks about being a free-spirited intellectual without doing anything that corresponds with these interests.

It shoves in dramatic events which feel out of step with both the characters and the events to push the film towards being as straightforward as possible. Knightley does a decent job – and Fiennes is extremely good as the Duke – but it settles for being something safe and traditional rather than a really interesting look at the cultural moods of the time, or the complexities of the real people it claims to portray. It shares it’s subjects beauty, but reduces her to blandness.