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FILM: September 2008
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| Keira Knightley gets better as she
becomes older – but I didn’t ask her any questions about
her age when I interviewed her at a press conference
after the screening of THE DUCHESS
(cert. 12A 1hr 50mins). The film itself is a good,
splendid looking production in the gorgeous costumes and
wigs tradition. Keira plays Georgiana Spencer who was
the Diana of her time in that at age 17 she married the
much older Duke of Devonshire, (played by Ralph
Fiennes), with a contract negotiated by her mother
(Charlotte Rampling). |
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The main requirement is for Georgiana to produce a
son but at first she only has two daughters and a
disinterested husband who is keener on his dogs and
bedding the maids than he is in her. She becomes a style
icon and then finds a friend in Bess Foster (Hayley
Atwell), but is very saddened when she discovers her
husband having an affair with Bess. Georgiana falls in
love with Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper) who will one day
become Prime Minister, but her husband forbids her to
continue and she lives in a ménage a trois with the Duke
and Bess. |
| Keira looks stunning in this film and in
real life is even thinner but attractive. She puts in a
moving performance as does Hayley and handsome Dominic –
first noticed in The History Boys – who is mature in the
role and also came across intelligently at the press
conference. Keira sounds a bit like Princess Diana and
certainly has her figure. She is also pursued by the
public and men and is a fashion icon and both she and
her husband have affairs and, of course, there are
“three in the marriage” and, after Georgiana’s death,
the Duke married his mistress. There are other modern
parallels, although Director Saul Dibb insisted that the
film is telling this particular story not the present
Royal family’s and Keira adds that she was 11 when Diana
died.
The film was shot in many of the original settings
and others of the period, including the Bristol Old Vic,
are incorporated to show places which are no longer
around. Dominic and the two girls remarked that it was
most useful being in the actual settings and getting a
feel of the atmosphere and life at the end of the
eighteenth century. Keira, in answer to a question on
performing in huge costumes said that she had difficulty
in breathing in the tight corsets and in using the
toilet in her trailer. Apparently in the passionate
love-making scene between Georgiana and Charles, Dominic
wore a skin-coloured nappy! |
| Keira was delighted to have been given such a huge
part which, she said, she found, “A massive challenge
and terrifying.” Hayley and Keira commented on the
sexual relationship between the two women – Bess
certainly had sexual power over Georgiana but was also a
mediator between the Duchess and the Duke. The Duchess
was a lonely person and looked for affection wherever
she could find it. |
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| Keira said that the film showed the
danger of marrying so young, as the Duchess was, and she
was also idealistic; the story is of a fairytale which
goes wrong – more shades of the Diana & Charles
marriage? And my question to Keira? I asked whether she
had any desire to appear on stage and she answered that
yes, she had the desire, no plans at the moment and then
responded eagerly to Dominic’s suggestion that she
looked at a play he had in mind and then the three
agreed that it might be a good idea if they all appeared
together in a production. |
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THEATRE TIP
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| The latest new plays at the National
Theatre are both devised or written by women. First the
Katie Mitchell directed …SOME TRACE OF HER
which packs as much variety into its 1hr 30mins, with no
interval, as most plays twice the length. It’s a
multi-media piece using video, film, 4 live musicians
and 8 actors who, in fact, operate all the lights,
cameras, move props and other equipment along with
playing various parts in this project based (very)
loosely on Dostoevsky’s novel. It looked spectacular but
most of the time I hadn’t a clue what was going on in
the narrative. |
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HER NAKED SKIN is a new
play by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and the first full-length
play by a woman to be put on the Olivier stage. Well,
congratulations to Rebecca as this is a stunning
production showing some of the torture suffered by
militant suffragettes on hunger strike in prisons around
1913. Starting with grainy newsreel film of Emily
Davison’s martyr’s death when she threw herself in front
of the King’s horse at the Derby, it goes on to show
upper and working class women’s devotion to the cause.
So determined are they to win votes for women that they
suffer the torture of force-feeding, graphically
depicted in one horrifying scene of a female prisoner
being held down by a number of guards while a nurse and
doctor pour liquid through a tube into her nostrils.
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| The story develops through the growing
love between Lady Celia Cain (a moving performance by
Lesley Manville) and a young machinist (Jemima Rooper)
as Celia realises that she needs to escape from her
comfortable but undemanding life with her husband. Susan
Engel is excellent as an older suffragist. My
grandmother was a suffragette – though not a militant –
and I can never understand how women ever fail to use
their vote. |
| If you haven’t yet seen it do go to THE 39
STEPS (Criterion), a very funny version of the
Alfred Hitchcock film performed at full speed – under
two hours - with just 4 actors. On the night I went:
Callum Coates as Richard Hannay and Nigel Betts,
Josefina Gabrielle, Alan Perron playing all the other
parts. |
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| They somehow manage to fit in all the
scenes from the 1935 film with very clever changes of
costumes and wigs or one character segues into another
with just a different hat to show a change of person.
There are some great bits of comic business too and the
whole production is directed with enormous gusto by
Maria Aitken. |
| There’s a lot of humour in another show
which is best known as a film: the Lerner and Loewe
musical, GIGI (Open Air Theatre,
Regent’s Park) is famous as the 1958 film in which
Maurice Chevalier played the old roué, Honore, and
Lesley Caron was a delightful Gigi. Here Topol is a most
amusing Honore, Lisa O’Hare a lovely Gigi aided by
Thomas Borchert as Gaston with Millicent Martin as
Gigi’s grandmother and Linda Thorson (do you remember
her in The Avengers?)as her aunt. If one can overlook
the cynical story-line of a 16 year-old girl being
trained to be a courtesan, the music and songs are
well-presented, with actors managing to dance as well,
the set is imaginative with very pretty costumes, and
the setting in the park is absolutely splendid. |
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Carlie Newman |
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