Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

jillmillenniumgirllevin La Ronde on the fringes of Bloomsbury"Carrington" is a sub-Bloomsbury version of La Ronde: X desires Y and sleeps with Z, A wants B, but sleeps with C, and so on and so on. This game of musical beds should carry the film, especially given Jonathan Pryce's uncanny impersonation of Lytton Strachey and Emma Thompson's persuasive Carrington. Add a script and cinematography to fulfill the nostalgia quotient, and le voila: life is lived and art is made en plein air and during an eternal summer; winter seems never seems to intrude, and the "staff" keep discreetly in the kitchen and the basement where they belong. All these Good Things should carry the movie. Alas, they do not. As in all biopics, the writing plays fast and loose with the truth. But was it absolutely necessary to insert two of the most famous Lyttonisms: his account of proposing to Virginia Woolf ('ghastly"), and his declaration that he would try to "come between" his sister and a potential rapist? In this tiny circle, desire balked and desire gratified seem almost incestuous.. And the lack of a coherent narrative leaves us puzzled. For example, Lytton's sudden gift of "a motorcar" to Ralph Partridge is unprepared for and opaque. Is he wooing Partridge? Using Partridge as a pander? Demonstrating uncomplicated generosity? The film's failure to answer questions like these saps its interest. "Carrington"isn't dull, exactly; rather, it's beautiful, nostalgic, and inert.

Vultural ~ Biopic of Edwardian painter Carrington and her platonic relationship with author Lytton Strachey. Set mostly in pastoral England, during the Great War and afterward. Strachey and Carrington entice and embrace various male companions, seemingly to vent their own frustrated passions. Unlike almost every "creative artist" film I have ever watched, the angst and toil not shown at all. Emma Thompson, as Dora Carrington, is quite good in this. Also, during the first half of the film, she manages the trick of resembling a twenty year old. Sense And Sensibility was released the same year; while she portrayed another twenty year old, there she looked like a matronly forty year old. Jonathan Pryce as Strachey is brilliant.

hcoursen This one needed tightening and focus. It drifts aimlessly in imitation of the non-sexual affair between Carrington and Strachey, but the art form is an imitation of an action, not a replication of mere aimlessness. That the characters are inherited from history and from a book about the Bloomsbury circle does not absolve the film, a separate work, from establishing the characters and their motives. Yet here we have the Rufus Sewell character charging around madly for no established reason, other than that he can't get into Dora's knickers. And his brief reappearance almost at the end is inexplicable. Carrington's lovers come and go -- obviously surrogates for her inability to consummate anything with Strachey. But those lovers have no frame or context or reason for being taken on by Carrington other than that old ennui. Her own character, then -- in spite of wonderful Emma -- gets lost in the slow motion meaninglessness of her life. She does depict the layering of the Bohemian that took the place of the stiff corseting of the rest of the ladies of the time. The beautiful moorlands of Yorkshire are just that -- a travelogue. They are not integral as, say, the world of Tess or Eustacia in Hardy. In spite of what other posters say, direction here is a major flaw.

kwft620-radio A movie that asks the question, how did it ever get made? Absolutely not a chance that it was made for profit. Once I stopped asking the question, I could enjoy the superior cinematic quality of all the elements that elevate a film to a work of art. I suppose it must have been exhibited in a theater, somewhere, though getting it booked must have been quite an accomplishment for its backers. I caught it on cable which allowed me to sip on a brandy while the film took its time unfolding in a style that I would describe as a splendidly animated coffee table book.I am moved to comment on Carrington to express my gratitude to its makers.