More literary stargazing by writer and first-time director Christopher Hampton, much preferable to the almost concurrent Total Eclipse, on which he was writer only. No doubt it helps that he's back on his native soil, turning his gaze to the homosexual Bloomsbury belletrist, Lytton Strachey. His ear for high-toned Wildean wit is dependably sharp -- and no less is the tongue of Jonathan Pryce, once, anyway, you get over your initial view of him as the Infiniti pitchman in a beard-and-spectacles disguise. The prime focus of the script is on Strachey's "unconventional" domestic arrangement with the painter Dora Carrington, each of them at liberty to cultivate other relationships, often under the same roof. As it unfolds, the movie conveys very well the poignancy of working out, as best as possible, a life that suits, and never mind what anyone on the outside says or thinks about it. ("But he's just a disgusting pervert!" Yes, but: "You always have to put up with something.") Hampton, however, is curiously uninformative about, or uninterested in, the woman in the picture (Emma Thompson, in a flapperish bob). Strachey dominates the composition, the title notwithstanding. And as the movie grinds on, and the domestic arrangement loses its shape, the job becomes the somewhat tedious one of telling us simply what happened to the people. And what happened next, and what happened next. The interest of that depends overmuch on our interest in the real people. Common limitation, that, of the literary lickspittle. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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