Carrington
by Christopher Hampton
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Emma Thompson, Jonathan Pryce, Rufus Sewell, Samuel West, Steven WaddingtonDirector: Christopher Hampton
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 122 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-12-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Carrington
Movie Review: Adrift in a French farce without a sense of humor
Summary: 4 Stars
This film, "Carrington," displays just about all the virtues and faults of the Merchant-Ivory/Masterpiece Theater genre. It is very earnest, very well acted and very pretty to look upon. It's sometimes quite intelligent. It is also very self-satisfied, very slow and very lacking in humor. It's sometimes very dull, too.
The virtues are just that, virtues. Cumulatively, they build up a lot of credit for this film. The faults, depending on a viewer's personal values, may be regarded as lying somewhere on a scale ranging from irrelevant to fatal. I lean to one extreme. My wife leans to the other.
It might even be argued that the self-satisfaction, the humorlessness are neither more nor less than accurate depictions of Dora Carrington, Lytton Strachey and that whole self-absorbed, sexually-perplexed, navel-gazing crowd of twits at Bloomsbury.
I prefer to regard the director-writer, the actors and the whole production as hopelessly gullible in taking their real life protagonists at their own value. The Woolfs, the Bells, Strachey and Carrington herself would, if given half a chance, express themselves as characters in a drama of high-flown aspirations and tragic consequences. I, on the other hand, tend to view them as puppets in a French farce, albeit one written by D. H. Lawrence.
This film, its settings, its characters and its mind-set bear only the most tenuous connection with the real, tangible world. As W.S. Gilbert might have put it, the film and all those in it yearn for Elysian fields, but ignore the fact that they "can't get'em and would only let'em out on building leases" if they had'em. "Carrington" would be well served by the presence of just such a character as Fitzgerald threw in to add a spice of reality to the slow-simmering gumbo of Gatsby and Daisy and Tom: Nick, the narrator, doubter and conscience--a pallid character, yes, but still a whiff of the tax paying, traffic light-bound workaday world.
As a film, "Carrington" is easy on the eye. Its story is interesting enough, although I can't imagine being drawn back to watch it of my own volition again at any time in the foreseeable future. But even as I question the worth of making the film, I can't deny the high level of skill lavished on it.
I think "Carrington" is a film worth seeing--once. That's good enough for four stars as far as I'm concerned.
Summary of Carrington
Life among the Bloomsbury group in post-Victorian England, as seen through the relationship between writer Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce in a well-wrought, if mannered performance) and painter Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson). Carrington won't give herself to any of the men in her life (including her husband)--at least not emotionally. Instead, this woman has found her soulmate in Strachey, a homosexual who, in fact, has a crush on Carrington's husband. They try to maintain a friendship outside their various romantic liaisons but keep winding up with each other. Still, despite an intriguing performance by Pryce and a cooler, less accessible one by Thompson, this film never quite takes off. Once you get the point--that this is a love that will never be consummated--you begin to wonder if, in fact, there is a larger point to be had. There isn't. --Marshall FineWritten and directed by Academy Award?(r) winner* Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) and starring two-time Academy Award?(r) winner** Emma Thompson (Sense and Sensibility) and Jonathan Pryce (Evita), Carrington is an "emotionally complex, moving" (Los Angeles Times) tale of lifelong love with unorthodox compromises, that is utterly enthralling entertainment! Amid the trendy, bohemian scene of London's famed Bloomsbury group, DoraCarrington (Thompson), a talented young artist, first meets bon vivant and writer Lytton Strachey (Pryce). The two creative souls are instantly attracted, although Strachey's desires clearly lie elsewhere. The unlikely pair joyously spends colorful days pursuing their artsand discovering that love works in mysterious ways. But their blissful existence hangs in the balance when Carrington brings home a lover and they suddenly find themselves caught within a bizarre love triangle. As conflicting passions heat to a boiling point, will true love triumph or will Carrington lose her one and onlysoul mate forever? *1988: Adapted Screenplay, Dangerous Liaisons **1995: Adapted Screenplay, Sense and Sensibility; 1992: Actress, Howard's End
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