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The Duchess is a forthcoming film based on Amanda Foreman's biography of the scandalous, 18th-century English aristocrat Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. It is scheduled for release in September 2008. Originally to be directed by Susanne Bier, The Duchess was directed by Saul Dibb.
Set at the end of the eighteenth century, The Duchess is the story of the beautiful and, glamorous Georgiana Spencer, the most fascinating woman of the age. While her beauty and charisma made her name, her extravagant tastes and appetite for gambling and love made her infamous. Married young to the older, distant Duke of Devonshire, intimate of ministers and princes, Georgiana became a fashion icon, a doting mother, a shrewd political operator and darling of the common people. But at the core of her story is a desperate search for love. From Georgiana’s passionate and doomed affair with Earl Grey to the complex ménage à trois with her husband and her best friend, Lady Bess Foster, The Duchess is a very contemporary tale of fame, notoriety and the search for love. (Her love child with Lord Grey was Eliza Courtney).
The Duchess is financed by BBC Films and Pathé. Make-up and hair design, both significant in a Georgian-set period piece, are by Daniel Phillips. The Duchess was filmed at Twickenham Film Studios and on-location at Chatsworth, Bath, Holkham Hall, Norfolk, Clandon Park, Kedleston Hall and The University of Greenwich: London.
Regarding lead actress Keira Knightley, director Saul Dibb said The Duchess was "a chance to take a character from late childhood - she's married at 17 - into full adulthood, 10 years later." It was also a chance to work with Ralph Fiennes, who she regarded as one of her most accomplished costars to date; Dibb said, "When I said, 'We've got Ralph interested in playing the Duke,' we both took a gulp and went, 'Fu*k.' ... But I didn't for one second feel that she wasn't up to the task."
The BBFC has classified the film as a 12A, citing the scene of implied marital rape, which is "delivered through Georgiana's screams of protest, heard from outside the bedroom door." The BBFC's PG rating allows implied sex as long as it is discreet and infrequent; the board decided that the scene in The Duchess is more than "discreet" or "implied". The film will be released in the United Kingdom on 12 September 2008.