I never liked history. Perhaps if we had been shown movies like the Lady and the Duke instead of having to read boring books, I would have felt differently.

This movie has the best bedroom scene ever. I won’t spoil it for you by telling you about it, but it does not involve sex. So even a high school teacher could show it to her class.

The tale of a beautiful royalist English gentlewoman living perilously in France during the Revolution, and her sometimes affectionate, sometimes tempestuous relationship with Philippe, Duke of Orleans, a cousin King Louis XVI but nonetheless a supporter of revolutionary ideas. The Lady manages to persuade the Duke to rescue an outlaw, but fails to keep him from voting for the King's execution.

The film was inspired by Grace Elliott's memoirs, "JOURNAL OF MY LIFE DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION," specifically the passages describing the author's relationship with the Duke, which focus on five crucially important dates in the chronology of the French Revolution.

A Technical Note about "Lady and the Duke": To depict historical Paris accurately, director Rohmer came up with a technique in which real-life characters are inserted into scenic backgrounds specially painted by Jean-Baptiste Marot. But the acting sometimes seems a bit cardboard sometimes and I was never really pulled into the movie.

Genre: Drama
Running Time: 129 minutes
Language: French with English subtitles
Rating: PG-13
Directed by: Eric Rohmer
Starring: Lucy Russell, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Francois Marthouret, and Leonard Cobiant

About the author, Madelyn Miller: Madelyn Miller is a member of the Dallas/Fort Worth Film Critics Association. She adores art house and foreign films and seems drawn to anything with a travel theme. She never met a film festival she did not like. Although she travels as executive editor of www.travellady.com about half the time, when home in Dallas you will often find her in movie theatres. Her film video collection is gradually replacing her cookbook library. Her favorite popcorn is heavily buttered; straight from a popcorn machine in a movie theatre. Chocolate inspires her to write better reviews. Website: http://www.travellady.com

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