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Critic's Rating: 3 stars

‘Duchess’ rules with beauty

Period movie relies more on costumes than on emotions

As a teenager in 1774 England, Georgiana Spencer celebrated her freedom with an infectious exuberance, giddily rooting for young men in a race for her affections.

But once she wed the older Duke of Devonshire in an arranged marriage, she was shackled by social mores, and propriety took precedence over her adventurous heart.

The public loved "G," as they called her. Her husband, not so much.

If you think this sounds like Princess Diana, you're not far off the mark. "The Duchess," starring Keira Knightley, deals with an ancestor of Di's, an early fashionista at odds with the upper crust and an agent of change for the Whig Party.

The duke (a dour, sour, superb Ralph Fiennes) and her mother (Charlotte Rampling) forge a marriage to provide the duke with an heir. At first, G fails in her mission and he seeks alternative partners. Despondent, she pines for her first love, Earl Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), of the tea fame, and attracts Lady Elizabeth Foster (Hayley Atwell), who catches the duke's roving eye and lands in both their beds at the estate. Over a huge dining table, they agree to share and share alike, a threesome seldom seen during the reign of King George III.

Adapted from Amanda Foreman's popular biography, "The Duchess" doesn't generate a lot of heat, despite its juicy story. Curiously devoid of passion, it's all 2-foot-tall hair towers, elaborate plumage and fancy frocks. It's as if director Saul Dibb shows G's attempts to enliven her life through the duke's dull gaze rather than tapping her energy.

Knightley, tall and slender with a defiant, jutting chin, slips into the fashion runway aspects of "The Duchess" effortlessly. She's less skilled at slipping into her 18th-century character, evoking instead a 2000s sense and sensibility. Her diva behavior is too modern for G.

Much more on the mark is Fiennes, who gets swallowed into the repressed black hole of the duke. Both cruel and clueless, he cannot fathom G's need for love beyond the physical act and her jealousy of his indiscretions.

The visual definitely overwhelms the psychological, as Dibb fills the screen with opulent scenes from Chatsworth House (the authentic seat of the Dukes of Devonshire), the Bath Assembly Rooms and 18th-century homes in Derbyshire and Norfolk. If only he had paid as much attention to G's inner turmoil as he did to her 30 costume changes.

It's a beautiful period piece that will send you to a bookstore for a better account of the dirt and vice at its core.

© 2014, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved.

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