The Line of Beauty

2006

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1
7.4| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 17 May 2006 Ended
Producted By: BBC
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00c7f1b
Synopsis

Crawl deep under the skin of Thatcher's Britain, seen through the eyes and experiences of a young, gay man, from the euphoria of falling in love to the tragedy of AIDS. A story of love, class, sex and money.

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Reviews

Scanialara You won't be disappointed!
Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever
Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
meaninglessbark The Line of Beauty looks great and is well acted and that's about it. It's not terrible, but there's nothing engaging about the story either. The Line of Beauty feels a bit like Brideshead Revisited in that the story is about an outsider who becomes an intimate of a wealthy family. But the Line lacks the depth of Brideshead, the story meanders until some dramatic plot points are thrown in. The characters have nothing going on beyond their descriptions, they're more like sketches of characters. And there's nothing appealing about any character. That, along with the meandering story, makes it difficult to stay interested and keep watching.But flaws aside the Line of Beauty is fine for an evening of empty TV viewing, especially if you're doing something else at the same time.
isabelle1955 I quite often see movies made of books I've read. Less often do I watch a film (or TV series in this case) and then read the book. But that's exactly what I did after watching The Line of Beauty on DVD. This BBC production of the superb Alan Hollinghurst novel, adapted for TV by Andrew Davies (the author of so many great adaptations for the BBC) is simply very good. It is perfectly cast and beautifully filmed. One of the best adaptations I've seen in a long time. It's very true to its source material yet at the same time can never replace reading the novel, which I strongly recommend anyone who enjoys beautiful writing, to do.The setting is 1980s London, Thatcher is in power and our hero, young Nick Guest (a perfectly cast Dan Stevens), has just gained a first at Oxford. Newly uncloseted as gay, but still a virgin, he arrives to stay at the upscale London house of college friend Toby Fedden (Oliver Coleman), the son of newly elected pompous Tory MP Gerald Fedden (Tim McInnerny, just terrific in this role.) Also in the household are Gerald's rich and rather saintly wife Rachel (Alice Krige – written forever into my heart as the Borg Queen unfortunately) and unstable, bipolar daughter Catherine, or The Cat, as she is known to the family (Hayley Atwell). Nick is ostensibly studying for a PhD in the more obtuse aspects of the writing of Henry James, but mostly his time is spent pursuing his first lover, the beautiful but prosaic Leo (Don Gilet), and his first love, beauty. Cat becomes his confidante in his pursuit of Leo, and he in turn is supposed to keep an eye on her as she veers through life on a swerving path of extremes. Nick is an aesthete, unworldly in the games of politics and money that he finds himself observing, and perhaps just a little disingenuous. He himself comes from a more humble, country town background, and is rather in love with the Feddens' life of easy wealth and beautiful possessions, into which he slots readily. This is played out against the back drop of the encroaching AIDS epidemic and Thatcher's politics. If Billy Elliot showcased one aspect of Thatcherism 'up North' in the 1980s, then this is one aspect of what was happening 'down South' in the same period. And in some ways, I guess it could be Britain's belated equivalent of Angels in America; Thatcher/Reagan politics and the onset of AIDS. Nick's affair with a beautiful but spoiled millionaire playboy, Wani Ouradi (Alex Wyndham), leads him into a cocaine fuelled life of high society parties, European travel, random sex and an esoteric, arty magazine (Ogee) and film which will never get made. Money is made and wasted with unconcern in this brave new Thatcher world. As his friends begin to get ill and die, Nick seems immune to it all, cocooned in the Fedden's beautiful home. But life begins to unravel as AIDS looms larger and larger, Cat denounces her father's extra marital affair to the press, hypocrisies are exposed and the family, of which he thought he was a part, ultimately closes ranks against Nick.I can understand that if you never lived through the 80s in Britain, this may all seem like an interesting but rather unreal and irrelevant look back at recent history. I must be 3 or 4 years older than Nick, but unfortunately – or fortunately I guess, depending on how you look at it – I spent most of the 1980s working offshore, doing my small bit to keep the North Sea oil industry afloat and profitable, so much of what happened in London passed me by, and news was heard in occasional snippets, bookended by the shipping forecasts, when we could get the ship's radio to work. Hideously expensive, hangover inducing Norwegian lager was our drug of choice. Come to think of it, most of Thatcherite economics was based on the bonanza of North Sea oil, so maybe I'm partly to blame? Anyway, I found it fascinating and terrific viewing. They captured the pomposities and hypocrisies of the era, the waste and excess so well, and the groveling of the MPs to "the Lady". It is also very funny in places. I can't recall if this is in the film as well as the book, but I am still smiling at Cat's description of a sequined Margaret Thatcher as resembling a Country and Western star. I wish I'd thought of that!
radkins "The Line of Beauty," which I recently saw on Logo, is a wonderful film, but it reminded me heavily of "The Great Gatsby" in that it makes the narrator a character in the scenario. Sam Waterston was given the role of Daisy Buchanan's poorer cousin, Nick Carraway. In "Line" Nick Guest serves in much the same way, with the exception that Nick Guest never realized he was an outsider, whereas Nick Carraway always did. Also much like Hemingway's reaction to F. Scott Fitzgerald's (author of "Gatsby") that "The rich are very different from us" - "Yes, they have more money", Guest finds out that human emotions, in this case recrimination, blame and betrayal, are just as much a part of the upper class as the lower. Guest and Gatsby both admire the upper class and at some point in each story, believe themselves equal to them, until each are made to pay for the sins of those they admire. In Gatsby's case, he is mistakenly shot by the wife of a garage mechanic who believes him to be Daisy's husband Tom, who is both wealthy and immoral. It is a classic story of social separatism, told with an extra layer of the start of the AIDS epidemic. It is a fine job of writing and acting all around. I was particularly impressed with the final slap in the face Nick gets from the housekeeper, who should have been more sympathetic to Nick, but who is also self-deluded in her thinking that she is part of the family, and not an outsider.
John B Sheffield So far after week two of "The lone of Beauty" I am a little disappointed.Some of the acting is good, as long as we except that it is only drama.I am unsure how people can feel that this FICTIONAL DRAMA is "factual" coverage of the "Thatcher" years - it is okay as drama, but I feel the award winning book is still much better.I Wonder if the BBC will ever give us the follow up and the next part of the drama and the years that follow with "Things Can Only Get Better" finishing with 2006 and the Fact that we are still waiting! with that promise from a Government that is full of sleaze.

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