The Lady and the Duke (2002)
71 %
Reviews Counted: 68 Fresh: 48 Rotten:20 Average Rating: 6.6/10
Consensus:
Visually stunning, The Lady and the Duke uses current technology to elegantly bring the past to life.
Runtime: 2 hrs 5 mins
Theatrical Release: May 10, 2002 Limited
Box Office: $124,812
Synopsis: This visually breathtaking film from New Wave director Eric Rohmer uses hand-painted sets that depict 18th-century Paris, the English lady's home, and the surrounding countryside with a vivid effect that looks like a realist oil painting brought to life. Set in the mid-1700s during the... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Lucy Russell, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Francois Marthouret, Leonard Cobiant, Caroline Morin
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Reviews
Though not one of Rohmer best films, it's worth seeing for the acting and the dialogue which magnify the glory of the French language. Amazingly, at 81, Rohmer continues to be productive; rejection of film by Cannes Festival stirred controversy in 2001
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02/14/07
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02/09/06
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07/21/05
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Who would have thought that in the year of Spider-Man and Attack of the Clones, the year's most innovative use of special effects would come in a film about the French Revolution?
01/15/05
Rohmer's playful style is often good fun. And Russell is especially compelling. But honestly, it's fairly hard going.
02/08/04
At 135-minutes, this stream-of-facts lecture trembles into the trenches of monotony without the detraction of technology.
12/22/03
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12/15/03
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12/15/03
My problem with The Lady and the Duke is not Rohmer's ostensibly pro-Royalist politics, but his now reactionary aesthetics.
10/05/02
Rohmer's novel, exhilarating and elegant work with painted scenery and digital equipment is a revelation. But this work is stuck in a film in which the foreground action is sleep-inducing by comparison.
10/03/02
Leave it to Rohmer, now 82, to find a way to bend current technique to the service of a vision of the past that is faithful to both architectural glories and commanding open spaces of the city as it was more than two centuries ago.
09/27/02
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Not only has Rohmer reinvented the costume drama with The Lady and the Duke, he makes the case that the genre is worth reinventing.
08/03/02
Rohmer makes a gracious, if occasionally tedious, effort to dress the French Revolution in digitally rendered scenes that bespeak the period perfectly.
08/02/02
Seldom has the elegant past of 18th century royal life married modern filmmaking with the grace and sophistication of Eric Rohmer's L'anglaise et le duc.
08/02/02
To the vast majority of more casual filmgoers, it will probably be a talky bore.
08/02/02
Watching The Lady And The Duke is like looking at a really fine play.
07/27/02
Nothing short of a technical marvel and a ravishing movie to look at.
07/26/02
Top Critic
Working from Elliott’s memoir, Rohmer fashions the sort of delicate, articulate character- and- relationship study he’s favored for decades.
07/26/02
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