Yesterday, Mother’s day, I went to the movies with my hubby. We watched the premiere of “The duchess”, with Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes.
The duchess
I was disappointed! I thought it was the traditional story about a strong woman, but no! Quite the opposite.
She’s actually way smarter than her vegetable husband, but also extremely naive and submissive. Keira Knightley is always in old ages movies and she always have a different role from what you expect – which makes her caracters always predictable. That suits her well, even though she’s not a brilliant actress. She was quite ok for the duchess role, but the caracter in itself is flawfull and disappointing – based on the story of Georgiana Spencer, yes, related to Diana Spencer, aka Princess Di.
A beautiful woman who expects love from her husband and never gets it, is very interested in politics, is very popular among those that matters, falls in love with a politician and gets his love back, bla-bla-bla.
All her mind doesn’t follow her weakness. She expects her mother to “tell her what to do”. Her husband sleeps with every and anyone (maybe even with his dogs) and she brings a friend – with whom he earlier flirts with – to live with them, hoping that he won’t sleep with her. She accepts his bastard daughter as hers, but tells the vegetable that she’s pregnant with her lover – being forced to give up on the child.
She never consider her options. She listens to her mother and swallows her husbands demmands. She give up on her life, her love and her dreams. She accepts the awful situation of having the mistress living at her house and having the honours of wife while she dies out.
She never thinks of using her influence to take over his powers, grant the lover a future and by consequence her own freedom.
It’s a caracter bad painted as smart and strong, because she’s neither of those, rather a fool. If this was the movie’s intention: well done! But I guess the real Georgiana was way more interesting than what we can see in this movie.
Anyway, not a good choice for mother’s day.
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It’s still raining here!
Not easy to find Mother’s day cards here. The tradition is for flowers, not much for cards.
I got flowers in church… but I’m not yet a mother.
Daily life in Estonia 