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100Rohmer's films are renowned for their beauty, so it's surprising that he made a picture using digital video rather than film. But this was the right choice.
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91Played by Lucy Russell with a defiant, unapologetic embrace of aristocratic privilege, Grace is a maddening yet fascinating character.
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90If you can forget the world-historic significance of the mass revolution that overthrew Europe's oldest absolute monarchy -- or rather, subsume it in the mysteries of personality -- The Lady and the Duke is the stuff of human interest.
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90The director manages to evade both the stuffy antiquarianism and the pandering anachronism that subvert so many cinematic attempts at historical inquiry.
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90This is absorbing throughout--not just a history lesson but, as always with Rohmer, a story about individuals
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88A vivifying film, though it's done in such a strange style that it takes a while to get used to it.
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83The technique is impressive. But it would count for little if the human story -- of a magnetic, resourceful, and, in the way of all Rohmer heroines, articulate woman who was mistress to the Duke of Orleans -- weren't engrossing on its own dramatic terms.
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80The effect is one of gorgeous puppets, a removed perspective that makes some of the most powerful political and social events in history seem like the sad, desperate flailing of monkeys.
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80In the lively exchanges between the titular duo and the technical innovation that links the past to the present, The Lady And The Duke brings the period to life with surprising immediacy.
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80Just as interesting, if not more so, is how Rohmer integrates his very contemporary concerns into a period drama, how he creates characters who manage to be true to our times as well as their own.
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80History comes alive with verve and cold-sweat suspense in The Lady and the Duke.
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80That Mr. Rohmer is an octogenarian just beginning to play with digital technology makes the venture even more intriguing.
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Still, it is a decidedly fresh take. Rohmer has said he came upon a condensed version of Elliott's diary by chance, in a history magazine. His rendering of her story focuses not so much on the politics of the time -- though they are the basis of much of the dialogue -- but on the emotional thicket.
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80Surprisingly manages never to grow boring -- which proves that Rohmer still has a sense of his audience.
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75An elegant story about an elegant woman, told in an elegant visual style. It moves too slowly for those with impaired attention spans, but is fascinating in its style and mannerisms.
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75The Lady and the Duke is not about the revolution. It's an intimate story of a woman's perspective during a dramatic event in world history.
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75The result is a galvanizing mix of intellectual discourse and guillotined heads.
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75Rohmer pulls off a wonderful feat: celebrating the elegance, and artifice, of another era at the same time he brings this tale of social upheaval boldly into the present.
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75Rohmer doesn't attempt to create any skepticism about Grace's perspective on her experiences; we are shown them as she saw them, and seeing is the real pleasure of The Lady and the Duke.
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70As always, conversation is the constant threading together Rohmer's stately pace and episodic structure, the thing he uses to show us who his characters are and what their friendship entails.
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70Old master Eric Rohmer, 82, uses new tricks in the form of painted backdrops inserted digitally to create a virtual reality. Rohmer goes Lucas - who could have guessed?
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70The effect, in this French period drama, is something like a moving pop-up book, in which characters seem to be two-dimensional cardboard cutouts come to life.
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63Rohmer's style saps the film of the drama that flows directly from the subject matter.
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50The Lady and the Duke, which drags on for over two hours, is an experiment in shooting a period film on a shoestring that turns out to be more interesting than actually entertaining.
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It's a fascinating concept, gorgeously rendered. Seeing the paint actually dry, however, would probably be more fun than most of this overly expository film.
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50It's dull in a very tasteful way, with none of the reverberating tenderness and sometimes surly vigor that characterize Rohmer's best work, things like "Summer" and "The Aviator's Wife."
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50The line between the dispassionate and the dull can be ominously faint, and when Rohmer kicks off his film with ten or fifteen minutes of solid anecdotal chat, you fear for the stamina of the audience. [13 May 2002, p. 96]
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40A bold (and lovely) experiment that will almost certainly bore most audiences into their own brightly colored dreams.
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