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Bodice-Ripping Blockbusters or Frocked-Up Flops?

Editorial Review

We've had a few films recently that aren't exactly changing history, but they're certainly giving it a sexy makeover. Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Other Boleyn Girl, even Atonement and Children of the Silk Road are all very colourful and evocative of the period they're set in, with great locations and costumes and – heaven forbid – great plots and dialogue, but filmmakers are also throwing something else into the mix, and that's sex!

The latest of these is The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley as a young woman Georgiana, whose arranged marriage to the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) becomes a problem when she has trouble producing a male heir, and the Duke finds another lover in her friend Bess. She, of course, chases flouncy-shirted and sexy Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), and the two have an illicit affair. Nothing new, perhaps, when it comes to period drama, but what this, and films like The Other Boleyn Girl, are doing is giving the stories a very contemporary raunchiness. The love scenes between Knightley and Cooper are steamy and erotic, with plenty of golden candlelight enhancing their very 21st century physiques.

But you can't help feeling that there's no way the real Charles Grey would have had such sexy hair, or the tanned and rippling manscaped torso he shows here; or that the real Duchess would be quite so svelte. The same thing happened with Eric Bana and Scarlet Johansson as Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn, or even Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Children of the Silk Road.

But does it really matter if they're not exactly true to period detail, or that historical events are beefed up or played down to fit the story? Well, if they're entertaining and open a window into a time and place that the audience wouldn't otherwise know much about, then no, it doesn't really matter. It may even inspire people to seek out the true story, and learn a bit of history in the meantime. If they're not that good – and unfortunately, there are always misfires (Children of the Silk Road looked great, but had dreadful dialogue and just didn't engage the audience) – that's when it becomes a problem.

Coming up soon is the new film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and while it's not based on historical fact, it is set in the 1920s and 30s, and promises to sex up the infatuations and relationships beyond what the novel, and the 1980's TV series only hinted at. So it seems that more than ever, even with period set pieces, sex sells. The purists will stick to the history books, of course, but for everyone else, bring on the raunchy frocks!

Tim Hunter, Citysearch Movies Editor

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