bedroom blues jump

TERROR INCOGNITO: FROM PAGE 47

Fiennes who digs deeper into the Duke to convey the limits of the times that produce these simple caricatures of men as little more than snide sideshow villains.

In these key personal details, the audience is privy to the narrative of a woman seen as the signature party-girl celebrity of her age tied to an aging stiff who wants what he has been led to believe is his birthright — and that’s quite a feat given a media system lacking our instantaneous digital connectivity.

(Who knows if Georgiana would have been able to out- Paris Paris Hilton today or if she might have achieved the status of post-Charles Princess Diana?) Yet there was supposedly much more to Georgiana. In a New York Times review of Amanda Foreman’s biography Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, Patricia O’Conner cast the party girl as “a

patron of both the sciences and the arts, she was an amateur chemist and mineralogist of note, as well as an accomplished musician, poet and novelist who enjoyed poking fun at herself and at the social set that slavishly imitated her.” The problem with Dibb’s lavish biopic is that beyond an aside or two where Georgiana appears at a rally in support of Grey — who would eventually go on to become prime minister — the film never illustrates her commitment to the public side of life in her times. There is very little substance presented in the movie to cement these claims, which is a shame when audiences would relish the opportunity to reflect upon the parallels of women in politics at this defining moment. Grade: C