2018 ( UK | Belgium | Italy | Germany ) ( Biography, Drama )
DIRECTOR: Rupert Everett
STARRING: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Emily Watson
It took Rupert Everett 10 years to make his film about Oscar Wilde’s final years. And you can feel that burning passion in his brilliant performance as the writer and famous wit. Oscar observes his own failure with ironic distance and regards the difficulties that beset his life with detachment and humour. The story is taken up when he is released from prison for gross indecency. Shunned by British society, he is forced into exile in France and Italy. Occasional flashbacks whisk us back to previous heady times, but Everett does not overdo them. He is far more concerned with Wilde’s decline, and with his persecution.
Everett (making his directorial debut) does his celebrated subject full justice, presenting him compellingly not as a caricature, dispensing rapier one-liners all over the place, but as a sad, complex, brilliant, tragic and flawed man.
(1hr 45min)