Jamie passion and passionfruit!

Based on a real story of Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire caught in a ménage-a-trois with her dry husband and Lady Bess, this is a sort of Diana prequel.  Well made but somehow lacking in originality, Keira Knightley does her usual competent job or portraying a forward thinking woman for her time trapped in a dry and virtually dead marriage with the Duke of Devonshire, played by Ralph Fiennes.  Fiennes does what he can with an unsympathetic part and tries not to make him a complete villain or deadly dull while in many ways he is both.  Hayley Atwell as Lady Bess is an attractive ambiguous character, Dominic Cooper doesn’t quite grab as Grey, Georgiana’s lover and Charlotte Rampling has little room to move as her mother.  A more sedate film than The Other Boleyn Girl, the settings, the photography and Rachel Portman’s music are all correct but the overall effect is to leave us wanting more.

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