The Lady and the Duke (2001)

71% of critics liked it
(70 reviews)
55% of users liked it
(1,211 ratings)

Having finished his acclaimed cinematic quartet "Contes des quatre saisons," legendary filmmaker Eric Rohmer takes DV camera in hand to recreate this idiosyncratic period piece adapted from the Grace Elliot memoirs. Concerned with faithfully evoking 18th century France, Rohmer uses two strategies --… More Having finished his acclaimed cinematic quartet "Contes des quatre saisons," legendary filmmaker Eric Rohmer takes DV camera in hand to recreate this idiosyncratic period piece adapted from the Grace Elliot memoirs. Concerned with faithfully evoking 18th century France, Rohmer uses two strategies -- using only eyewitness accounts of the times and avoiding all external settings, arguing that Paris now is a completely different city than it was during revolutionary times. The story revolves around Grace Elliot (Lucy Russell), a Scottish aristocrat stranded in Paris during the French Revolution. She is once again thrown together with Philippe Egalite, the cousin to the king, the Duke of Orleans, and Grace's former lover. Their friendship remains complicated and uncertain, and is made all the more complex by the rush of events around them. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: PG-13, 2 hr. 9 min.
Directed By: Eric Rohmer
Written By: Eric Rohmer
Genres: Art House & International, Drama

In Theaters: Oct 5, 2001 Wide
On DVD: Oct 1, 2002
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

Critic Reviews

Susan Stark, Detroit News
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.
Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star
Nothing short of a technical marvel and a ravishing movie to look at.
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail
Whenever the subtleties of political morality get a bit overbearing, there's a respite in the painterly streets of Paris, where, we are reminded, the past was another city, strange and resistant to present-day adornments.
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
I loved the look of this film.
Joe Baltake, Sacramento Bee
A highly stylized, willfully artificial experiment, yet it uses its artifice to bring a major distant event thrillingly to life.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
An elegant story about an elegant woman, told in an elegant visual style.
Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com
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
Jeffrey Overstreet, Looking Closer
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?
Rich Cline, Film Threat
Rohmer's playful style is often good fun. And Russell is especially compelling. But honestly, it's fairly hard going.
Greg Muskewitz, eFilmCritic.com
At 135-minutes, this stream-of-facts lecture trembles into the trenches of monotony without the detraction of technology.
John Demetry, PopMatters
My problem with The Lady and the Duke is not Rohmer's ostensibly pro-Royalist politics, but his now reactionary aesthetics.
Josef Braun, Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)
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.
Jason Anderson, eye WEEKLY
Not only has Rohmer reinvented the costume drama with The Lady and the Duke, he makes the case that the genre is worth reinventing.
Laura Kelly, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Rohmer makes a gracious, if occasionally tedious, effort to dress the French Revolution in digitally rendered scenes that bespeak the period perfectly.