THE DUCHESS

This colourful biopic clumsily echoes the Diana Spencer saga, writes Donald Clarke

IN A recent interview, Keira Knightley claimed that the words "Princess Diana" were never once mentioned on the set of this attractive Georgian romp. Really? This is rather like hearing that nobody said the word "ape" on the set of King Kongor "iceberg" while shooting Titanic.

Even if the life of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire - friend to RB Sheridan, lover of future prime minister Charles Grey - did not foreshadow that of the doomed clothes horse, somebody would surely have pointed out that the two women, Spencers both, were raised on the same echoing estate in Northamptonshire. If Keira is to be believed, The Duchess must have employed the dimmest film crew in England.

The picture is, in fact, littered with explicit allusions to the People's Princess debacle. Ralph Fiennes, on top form as the protagonist's ghastly husband, echoes Prince Charles's famous "Whatever love means" remark by declaring that he loves Georgiana "in the way that I understand love". Wherever she goes, sketch artists (supposedly the paparazzi of their day) follow with pencil and parchment.

If you were still in any doubt as to the producers' intent, the poster explains that: "There were three of them in her marriage." One half expects Elton John to pop up and tinkle the nearest harpsichord. (Then again, even he might seem a little underdressed in the England of George III.)

These clumsier gestures towards events of the 1980s and 1990s are frustratingly unnecessary. The parallels between the two lives are so striking that even the dopiest viewer could, surely, make the connection. Moreover, the film- makers, working from a popular biography by Amanda Foreman, have at their disposal an engaging story that requires no artificial stimulation.

Knightley, as is often the case, acts almost entirely with her alarmingly prominent mandible. Still, being the most pestered of contemporary English actors she is well cast as the eligible daughter of Charlotte Rampling's terrifyingly haughty Lady Spencer.

The film begins with Georgiana being married off to the dim, uncommunicative Duke of Devonshire and quickly realising that her duties involve keeping quiet, smiling at the guests and delivering a male heir. Sadly, she seems capable of producing only female children. Following a desperate falling out with the old git, she makes friends with one Lady Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell) and begins smouldering in the direction of Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper). As time moves on, Georgiana turns into a significant political manipulator and the most talked-about socialite of her age.

The director was to have been Susanne Bier, Danish alumna of Dogme 95, but, following some obscure dispute, Saul Dibb (director of the urban drama Bullet Boyand much TV) was brought in to wield his safe pair of hands. The result is often cheesy and sometimes very broad. One would have thought that the potential audience for such a middle-brow film would not require hot lesbian action to keep them awake, but Dibb includes a gratuitous scene in which Knightley and Atwell rub breathily and nakedly against one another.

The film constantly editorialises about contemporaneous mores, and the guest appearances by Georgian celebrities are clumsily handled. Still, the film does work. Much credit for its success is due to Fiennes, who delivers his best performance in years as the appalling Duke.

Equal parts Prince Charles, Ernst Blofeld and dead calf, William Cavendish seems, simultaneously, too pathetic to be properly loathsome and too cruel to be in any way pitiable. Indeed, even when forcing himself on his wife or embarking on yet another squalid affair, he comes across as a wretched non-person, entirely defined by the demands of status and the pressures of convention.

It is impressive that Fiennes manages to evoke some sympathy for the in-bred poltroon. It is more admirable still that, without much help from the script, he turns him into a comic character. That noted similarity to the present Prince of Wales is, of course, entirely coincidental.