CROWN OF THORNS, WHY MY DUCHESS IS AN ENTERTAINING MASTERCLASS IN LATE-CAREER TRIUMPH. Almost alchemical magic that occurs, when a screen legend finally finds the role that perfectly weaponizes their entire mythos. Joan Collins has been synonymous with the imperious, shoulder-padded glamour of Alexis Carrington for many decades, yes her characterization was so potent, that it threatened to eclipse a career spanning over seventy years. However in Mike Newell’s MY DUCHESS, all that glittering armour is stripped away, revealing that very something far more fragile, grotesque, and ultimately human. More than merely a biographical drama about the final, cloistered years of Wallis Simpson, rather a ruthless, claustrophobic chamber piece about the predation of the elderly, the corrosion of legacy, and the terrifying vacuum left when power fades.
ONE GILDED CAGE AND ONE PREDATOR. Opening in 1972, in the wake of the death of the Duke of Windsor. Wallis (Joan Collins) is no longer the chic American divorcee who caused a constitutional crisis, rather she is a widow languishing in her Parisian chateau, with her health failing, plus her memory flickering like a dying bulb. Surrounded by a fading entourage, including the colourful confidant Jean-Claude (Laurent Lafitte) and the devoted butler Louis (Buom Tihngang) Wallis exists in a suspended animation of grief and privilege. Maître Suzanne Blum (Isabella Rossellini), is the lawyer, who initially presents herself as the last bastion of defence, for the Duchess’s interests.
Calling MY DUCHESS a “royal drama” is to do the movie a disservice. Newell, working from Louise Fennell’s razor-sharp script, directs this less like THE CROWN and more like a psychological thriller in the vein of the movie WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?. The chateau becomes a cage, and Blum, with Rossellini’s chillingly calm demeanour, is the serpent entering the garden. The genius of the film lies in its pacing. We watch, helplessly, as Blum’s “protection” slowly curdles into isolation. Phone lines are cut, trusted friends are dismissed, and the legal guardian becomes the jailer. A horror story dressed in haute couture. The historical record supports the film’s grim trajectory, by 1977, Blum had effectively become the widowed Simpson’s sole representative, exploiting the royal’s memory lapses and physical weakness to dismiss other lawyers and assume near-total control. What the film does brilliantly is transform that dry legal reality into a visceral, creeping dread.
COLLINS’S REVELATION. Much has been made of the fact that Collins, at ninety-two, is playing a woman in her late seventies and eighties. But the age gap is irrelevant, what matters is the lack of vanity. Joan Collins (Born 23rd May 1933), does not play Wallis as a tragic queen, she plays her as a broken, often difficult, and deeply vulnerable woman. The film reportedly required heavy aging makeup and straggly nightgowns, stripping away the Dynasty veneer. What remains is a performance of staggering restraint. There are moments where Wallis’s eyes dart with confusion, a flicker of the sharp wit that once captivated a king, only to be extinguished by confusion or medication. Her performance earns its pathos, not through grand monologues, but through silence and physical decay.
The backstory of how this film came to be only deepens the resonance of Joan Collins’s work. She has been chasing this project for over thirty years, ever since a visit to the Windsors’ former Paris villa in the early 1990s, where the former valet Sydney Johnson told her the non-fiction truth of Blum’s takeover. Joan Collins has spoken openly about how the role of Alexis Carrington “haunted” her, pigeonholing her in the public imagination despite decades of varied work in cinema, theatre and television. MY DUCHESS is her rebuttal. She reportedly told producer John Gore that he would see “everything come away, no makeup,” and that promise is kept. Not a star turn, much rather an act of excavation. Collins is not asking for our pity, but she demands our attention.
ROSSELLINI’S QUIET MENACE. Opposite Collins, Isabella Rossellini delivers a masterclass in passive aggression. As Suzanne Blum, she rarely raises her voice. She doesn’t need to. Rossellini plays Blum as a woman who genuinely believes she is the only competent person in the room, which makes her eventual authoritarian control all the more terrifying. The dynamic between the two women is electric. Not a catfight, much rather a slow, methodical takeover. Blum doesn’t hate Wallis, she simply views her as an asset to be managed, and a legacy to be controlled. The scenes where Blum calmly dismisses Wallis’s long-time staff or overrules her wishes regarding the Duke’s medical privacy are chilling, because they feel so bureaucratic and mundane. Pure evil executed with a fountain pen and a polite smile, rather than a dagger. Rossellini, who has spent recent years delivering remarkable supporting turns in films like CONCLAVE, brings a similar precision here, creating a villain who is terrifying precisely because she believes herself to be the hero of her own story.
THE ENSEMBLE SUPPORTING COURT. The whole cast is uniformly excellent, filling out the claustrophobic world of the chateau. Laurent Lafitte brings a necessary lightness as Jean-Claude, the confidant whose loyalty is tested and ultimately weaponized by Blum. Buom Tihngang’s Louis is the heart of the film, being the one figure whose devotion is entirely selfless, and whose quiet anguish at being pushed away by Blum, is one of the film’s most affecting subplots. Brief appearances by Charles Dance as Lord Mountbatten and Miranda Richardson add texture to the outside world that Wallis is increasingly cut off from, reminding us of the vast political and social machinery that once revolved around this woman, now reduced to a few visitors in a darkened room. The film runs a lean 118 minutes, and not a single scene feels wasted, plus every supporting player exists, to tighten the vice around the Duchess.
AESTHETICS OF DECAY. Technically, the film is impeccable. The production design walks a fine line between the faded opulence and the hoarder-level clutter. The chateau feels less like a palace and more like a mausoleum. The lighting is often dim, forcing the audience to lean in, to squint, mirroring the Duchess’s own failing eyesight. The score is minimal, allowing the silences—and the sharp, cutting dialogue—to carry the weight. Newell, who directed Four Weddings and a Funeral, proves here that he has a far darker, more cynical register. There are no easy resolutions, no triumphant third-act redemption. The ending is as messy and ambiguous as real life. The film has been described by festival programmers as playing “like a gothic thriller exploring fame, aging and dark manipulation behind closed doors”. A haunted-house story, where the ghost is still alive, trapped inside her own bedroom, whilst a stranger rearranges the furniture downstairs.
PRECISELY WHY THE STORYTELLING MATTERS. MY DUCHESS has now arrived at an important moment, when conversations about elder abuse, conservatorship, and the legacies of controversial public figures are at a cultural peak. The film does not try to rehabilitate Wallis Simpson into a saint. It acknowledges her complicity in her own myth-making and her often difficult personality. But it also refuses to let her be defined solely by the abdication. By focusing on her final, powerless years, the film asks a pointed question, What happens to a woman who was once the most talked-about person in the world when the world stops talking about her? The answer, as presented by Blum, is that the vultures circle.
TRIUMPH OF LATE-CAREER CASTING AND SHEER TENACITY. Hollywood has a very long history of discarding actresses when over a certain age. That Joan Collins, at ninety-two, is headlining a major film festival opener, and delivering a performance of this caliber is a rebuke to that system. She took a subject that everyone thought was exhausted, all about the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor, and have found a fresh, horrifying angle by simply asking, “What happened after the fairy tale went sour?” Collins herself put it, she has always been fascinated by “women who everybody says are nasty people,” and in stripping away the layers, finding that they are not really. That empathy, hard-won and unsentimental, is what elevates the film from a mere curiosity to a genuinely essential piece of cinema.
MY DUCHESS @ THE 2026 RUSSELL HOBBS BRITISH FILM FESTIVAL @ PALACE CINEMAS. MY DUCHESS is not a feel-good movie. A slow-burn, uncomfortable, and deeply rewarding character study. A five-star film, because the movie, fully trusts its audience, to sit with complexity. The villain is not offered in a cartoonish sense, much rather a portrait of two women, with one losing her grip on reality, whilst the other tightens her grip on control, both locked into a fierce battle where there are no winners. Joan Collins and Isabella Rossellini are a match made in cinematic heaven, as these two icons, do understand that the most interesting true stories are often told in the shadows of the throne, but not in the spotlight. Go for the spectacle of Collins, and stay for the chilling, unforgettable tragedy of a Duchess who was in the end, entirely at the mercy of the person which she trusted most.
Dive now into the star-studded line up of THE 2026 RUSSELL HOBBS BRITISH FILM FESTIVAL, including some of Britain’s most well-known faces, including Olivia Colman, Claire Foy, Bill Nighy, Andrew Garfield, Helen Mirren, Andrew Scott, and many more.
The 2026 Russell Hobbs British Film Festival opens in Sydney from Wednesday 28th October 2026 until 29th November 2026, Palace Norton Street, Palace Moore Park, Palace Central.
Tickets are now on sale on-line at
https://britishfilmfestival.com.au/
