Knocked Up: Keira Knightley strives for something more than bad sex, nice hats and male babies in The Duchess

Near the start of The Duchess, Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightley), newly wed to the deeply dour Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes), critiques a long-winded dinner party speech made by Charles Fox (the wonderful Simon McBurney), declaring dubious his rhetoric about freedom in moderation. One is or isn’t free, Georgiana counters, it is not subject to degrees. It’s one of those movie moments seemingly designed to convey the precociousness of the protagonist, yet, in an interesting reversal of the convention, the next hour and a half of The Duchess will pretty much sink that theory of hers to the bottom of the ocean: Georgiana herself will indeed know the taste of freedom, but it will never be open to her fully.

Based on Amanda Foreman’s biography, Saul Dibb’s The Duchess is a smartly constructed, only slightly overcooked historical feminist tear-jerker, ushering Georgiana into dreary wedlock with one royally cold fish. The Duke’s exclusive interest in producing male progeny requires him only to comfortably house his wife and stick it in every now and then like some devout if lifeless gambler mechanically plugging so many coins into the slots. Like any prudent gambler—and closet rapist—he also circulates the room and tries his hand at other suitable receptacles, eventually taking as his live-in mistress one Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell), a homeless aristocrat and battered woman both more bosomy than his wife and bearing a solid track record for birthing males. (And in one especially splendid little boudoir scene, Bess also proves herself a trusty sexual therapist for the whole family.) This same courtesy is not extended to Georgiana, whose affair with future prime minister Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper) ends prematurely in some nasty blackmail orchestrated by the Duke and reinforced by Georgiana’s own mom (Charlotte Rampling).

Bouncing between a public persona as celebrity political campaigner and formidable fashionista and a private life of sexual frustration and emotional neglect tempered only by her embracing of motherhood, Knightley really is quite impressive here, embodying both sassy poise in a delicious array of hats, chokers, wigs and gowns, and frailty veiled by the same opulent wardrobe, her delicate figure slowly collapsing before our eyes as the manor walls close in. Fiennes on the other hand is an altogether different sort of presence in the film, certainly more static. His casting’s hardly imaginative and his masterful way with eliminating all signs of human warmth gives him almost nowhere to go. Yet even within the confinements of his role there’s considerable nuance to enjoy, and I suppose its Fiennes’ extremes of reserve that make his final, very subtle truce with Georgiana oddly affecting. Okay, like, really oddly.  

Dibb’s particular framing keeps certain otherwise purely functional sequences engaging, often observing Knightley in profile so as to better trace the gradual wearying of her spine, while clearly favouring Cooper’s hunky physique in their scenes of intimacy. He doesn’t fuss too much over royal pageantry and even throws up the final series of what-happened-later over well-chosen images instead of over the usual drawn-out blacks. Dibb also has the good sense to leave all similarities to later beloved English roses also named Spencer who were also tragically thrust into loveless royal marriages entirely up to the deductive powers of the audience.

In Bruges: Hitmen with your best shot

Few mysteries baffle like the persistence of movies about hitmen. Why we’re supposed to be so in love with those who assume this vile occupation that almost no one can relate to is beyond my critical powers. We can get philosophical about it, discuss the existential dilemma inherent in killing strangers for money or draw thematic corollaries with the glorious samurai genre, but that still wouldn’t explain why the vast majority of hitmen movies are so incredibly stupid, shallow and devoid of imagination.

I’d be curious however to question English playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh on the appeal of hitmen flicks, since McDonagh doesn’t seem stupid or shallow or content to ape Tarantino and yet has chosen to make his feature debut in just this over-harvested field. In Bruges is basically your hitmen buddies go on holidays and get sensitive movie. Among other questionable choices it stars Colin Farrell. The surprise comes only as you get well into the film: it’s not that bad.

On orders from the boss, Ray (Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) hightail it the opulent Belgian medieval village of the title to hide out and await instructions after the proverbial job gone wrong. While elder, gentler Ken yearns to kick back and sightsee the abrasive-tongued Ray just wants to booze up and forget what we gradually learn was a horrific accidental killing dealt out by Ray’s own hand. Compulsively following a perverse obsession with dwarves (I’m not making this up), Ray winds up sneaking onto the set of some godawful Euro-co-pro art film and snagging a fetching Dutch AD, who as it turns out is also heavily involved in criminal activity.

This playing as a comedy at least half of the time, the blokes do have some winning one-liners become increasingly sympathetic. Gleeson’s pretty easy to love and Farrell, despite some grating overacting of the face, gets more interesting as his character opens up about what’s really eating him. Whether or not these guys are plausible cold-blooded career killers is a question perhaps best-posed to the professionals, but when a supremely nasty Ralph Fiennes shows up in the third act and the heavy shooting starts they look comfortable enough blowing each other way, I guess.

While McDonagh remarkably manages to weave much audacity and crudity into a narrative so rife with guilt, loneliness and suicide without becoming entirely glib, the actors do a solid job of basically asking that we all agree on how totally bogus this all is and get on with splattering brains and pleading for redemption. The truth is that In Bruges never entirely redeems its flaws, but it’s a not too shabby a start for a career in movies.