Summary
- Duchess‘ outdated script fails to subvert sexist tropes or deliver on the female empowerment promised.
- Despite trying to embrace female empowerment, the movie still falls prey to the male gaze.
- Scarlett’s journey to anti-hero status is overshadowed by her dependence on a male savior.
If you’ve ever wondered what a remake of Pretty Woman written and directed by Guy Ritchie would look like, then
Duchess (2024)
is the film for you. The only problem is that Duchess contains none of the verve and vitality of Ritchie’s early London gangster movies, and its gender politics often feel less progressive than the 34-year-old Julia Roberts movie. Co-written with star Charlotte Kirk, Neil Marshall’s movie tells the story of Scarlett (Kirk), a lowly pickpocket who falls in love with diamond smuggling gangster Rob (Philip Winchester), until tragedy forces her to rise up the criminal ranks.
It’s established that Scarlett has had her fill of bad men, from her drunken and abusive father Frank (Colm Meaney, wasted in a cameo role) to her lowlife employer Adam (Harvey Dean). However, rather than presenting Scarlett’s relationship with Rob as a continuation of bad habits, Duchess presents him as a White Knight and an answer to all of Scarlett’s problems, and therein lies the movie’s main issue. Kirk and Marshall’s script tries incredibly hard to present a foul-mouthed, female empowerment gangster movie, but Duchess can’t escape the male gaze of its director, or some very outdated tropes.
Duchess Fails To Empower Its Female Characters
Duchess opens with its lead character, scantily clad, and coaxing a sleazy man into her bed so that her male accomplice, Danny (Gotham‘s Sean Pertwee), can exact bloody revenge. This opening scene sets the tone for the rest of the film. For roughly the first hour, our heroine is merely asked to look pretty or stand behind her much stronger and more powerful male lover. Duchess‘ synopsis boasts that Scarlett “morphs into an anti-heroine to be reckoned with“, but that metamorphosis is hampered by her lover, who requires her to stay in the bedroom while he conducts business.
However, Rob is never presented as anything but an unproblematic savior, which severely undermines any attempts at Duchess’ alleged female empowerment. From the moment Rob picks her up in a nightclub, Scarlett is in his thrall, and is excited by his criminality and dangerous personality. Scarlett never for a second questions the life she’s signed up for, nor does she see any parallels with her own tragic mother, despite fumbled attempts by the script to draw this comparison.
Rather than reject sexist tropes like using female sexuality to fox unwitting male villains, Duchess embraces them, and makes no attempt at subversion.
Scarlett has no agency for the majority of Duchess, which, for a female-led revenge thriller, is a huge problem. When Duchess finally gives its protagonist some agency around the 70-minute mark, Scarlett just ends up aping the behavior of the men in her life. For example, she hires some women to help her with her bloody quest, but their only purpose is to distract some guards with their femininity. Rather than reject sexist tropes like using female sexuality to fox unwitting male villains, Duchess embraces them, and makes no attempt at subversion.
Duchess’ Subversion Of A Sexist Trope Rings Hollow
There’s clearly an attempt in Duchess to subvert one of the most dated and sexist tropes in crime movies, but it rings hollow. Despite a role reversal at the halfway point that may have felt subversive to Kirk and Marshall, the direction of the movie proves that Duchess can’t fully escape the male gaze. The movie is full of lingering shots of Scarlett in various states of undress, and even the gorier scenes find the camera lingering on the blood and sweat glistening on our heroine’s cleavage. While Duchess is unabashed exploitation cinema, it’s still dated even by those standards.
One of the most egregious moments is when Scarlett meets fearsome crime boss Charlie (Stephanie Beacham), who is revealed to be, shock horror, a woman. Scarlett’s surprise at meeting a criminal matriarch may be intended as a comment on her own sheltered life in a male-dominated environment. But in the context of the story, it only serves to further emphasize how retrograde and derivative Duchess appears in a crowded field of superior female-led crime movies.
Duchess is now playing in UK theaters and is available on digital.
1.5
Deeply entrenched in the dark, dangerous world of diamond smuggling, a petty thief transforms into a terrifying anti-hero after being left for dead and vowing revenge on those who wronged her.