THE DORKESS

Brit bodice-ripper ‘Duchess’ is ripper-offer

Featuring improbably flat dialog and flaccid delivery, “The Duchess” [imdb] is not to be mistaken for any form of nobility. This turbid period “drama” muddles threadlike thesp Kiera Knightley through themes of love, fidelity, marriage, and sex without drawing any conclusions, or even asking any comprehensible questions. Like an impotent paperback romance, this outing is too stiff to feel genuine, too floppy to be compelling, too numbing to be artsy, and too engorged to be commercial. Pic might draw fem fans, but overall auds and B.O. will be limp.

The plot, which is tortuously slow at best, involves some aristocratic daughter, played by Knightley, who aptly identifies herself as being a supposedly empowered and intelligent woman in the first few frames of the film by gambling on men. She is promptly auctioned off in a tersely arranged marriage to the Duke of Devonshire (properly pronounced “Deven-shuh”) – Ralph Fiennes, with a wonderful misogynistic twinge – who establishes himself as a real jerk only interested, as always, in a male heir. His role in 19^th Century England as a lord would seem mostly to involve screwing nearby women and ignoring any female progeny he engenders in the process. Cookie-cutter character, check and check. I was ready to hate him completely, until he miraculously appears as a caring father to a boy. That’s the sort of mixed signal that you might find in a complex and interesting character. But it’s so promptly ignored here that any kind of nuanced contemplation of personhood is easily ignored.

The rest of the movie meanders just as aimlessly. The only human interests on display are self-interest and a little maternal affection. A trivial affair, for instance, is intended be the rapturous expression of freedom the Knightley character so desperately wants and lacks in her home. But it’s not. It seems blithely cliché and predictable. As her mother so stoically intones, “this affair has no purpose.” She relates to the film well.

The erudite will be holding out for some subtext under all this. It’s hard to really know what the ostensible point of “Duchess” is. The theme of the film would seem to be that men generally suck, and pretty terribly in some cases. My formal training is in philosophy, so I will be the first to admit that technically that is a plausible premise, if a good argument can be made for it. But no such defense is put forth. Instead, the overwhelming thematic shallowness of “Duchess” is disguised and besmirched in otherwise competent layers of technical artistry and performance. So if you can enjoy the technical finesse on display here for 110 minutes, you might add this pic to your rental queue. But if, like me, you tire of costumery or authentic accents, when devoid of humanity, you might opt out of this gilded fantasy.

There was a point in time when a bodice-ripper could be a serious contender. “Shakespeare in Love” netted a couple of Academy Awards, including best picture. I will cry if “Duchess” receives any awards, even a Golden Globe.

[Update: “Duchess” received no Globes, although Fiennes was nominated for his role.]