Doris Duke Played By Susan Sarandon

HBO's drama about fabled heiress Doris Duke, concentrates on her relationship with her butler Bernard Lafferty, a man who tentatively becomes perhaps the best friend she has in the world.The film -- a hard-to-categorize exercise in comic pathos -- covers only about six years in Duke's life and doesn't even attempt to be comprehensive. A 1999 CBS miniseries, "Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke" (based in part on a memorable book by former Style writer Stephanie Mansfield), was a scattershot attempt at full-fledged biography. The approach taken on "Bernard and Doris" by writer Hugh Costello is more manageable, an extended riff on Duke's relationship with Lafferty and how these two lonely people may truly have been made for each other.

As Duke, Susan Sarandon gives one of those performances that's so close to perfect it seems more like channeling than acting. She becomes Duke from her initial appearance and delivers every single syllable of dialogue as if these were real words that just popped into her head. Rich drunks are not the most sympathetic of souls, but Sarandon lets us see through the eccentric behavior to the lost soul, poignant even when comical.Ralph Fiennes plays Bernard Lafferty, at first delicately toadying as he learns Duke's innumerable eccentricities, later letting her manage various details of his life, or as much of a life as it is.