CARRINGTON
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Production values are absolutely
first rate, but the story is worthy of Harold
Robbins. This is a true story populated with
supposed geniuses, but we learn little about them
except about their sex lives. With this budget,
Emma Thompson, and Jonathan Pryce, somebody should
have asked if this story was really worth the
telling. Rating: 0 (-4 to +4)
This is the true story of a woman who made all her own choices. She chose to love a man who (in addition to being much older and a bit repulsive) was gay and could not give her a sexual relationship. She chose her lovers, ruining their lives. Yet she still ended unhappy because a gay man could not love her back the way she wanted. It seems to be the point of view of the film that we should feel very sorry for Dora Carrington. But you know, life is tough. In spite of the best efforts of the filmmaker to make Carrington a sympathetic character there is roughly 98% of humanity more deserving of sympathy. And the tears that some audience members shed for her could have been much better spent.
Dora Carrington (played by Emma Thompson) is a young but very promising art student when she first meets Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce). Strachey is a most disagreeable and self-centered man. For reasons never really shown in the film Carrington falls in love with him. Their relationship is mostly platonic since Strachey is gay and not interested in sex with her. However at this point in life Carrington is not interested in sex at all, so his orientation is nota problem. That will change. It is to be presumed that their relationship is on a higher and more intellectual plane, though writer/director Christopher Hampton does painfully little to us show this. Later when Carrington decides that she does like sex after all, she takes a husband to whom both she and Strachey are attracted and apparently tries to make up for lost time. Even more fascinated by sex as she gets older, Carrington takes multiple lovers including her husband's best friend. She apparently has the looks to attract men and is little fettered by contemporary (1930s) morality or even decency.
In all this time we see little of Carrington's supposed intellect. Hampton shows us far more of her body than we see of her mind. Her talent for painting seems to be channeled mostly into home decoration. Her attraction to Strachey is never explained since he seems to have the sex appeal of an old book consumed by mildew. His conversations are more cutting than clever. Through the middle of the film nearly every scene seems to concern in some way the sex lives of the characters.
Much of CARRINGTON seem well photographed, though at times there are disturbing and obvious shifts in filters giving some scenes a disagreeable yellow tint. The directing and acting are quite up to what you would expect for the prestige production this was intended to be. Jonathan Pryce gives an appealing portrait of a most unappealing character. Emma Thompson never gives a bad performance, but did not noticeably show us anything new in her acting besides a willingness to take her clothes off. She shows us too much of the flesh of Dora Carrington and not enough of the person.
I saw this film at the Edinburgh Film Festival. It had already won a Special Jury Prize and a Best Actor Award to Pryce at Cannes. I had high expectations and I certainly expected better than what was basically a Harold Robbins sort of sex story, only set in the first third of the century and made with high production values. I cannot rate this higher than a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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