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9 to 5: Days in Porn
Oliver Parker's walk on the Wilde side is a crisp retelling of the tale of roister- doisterers undone by the ravages of time
Oscar Wilde's best-loved bachelor has not been well served by cinema. Albert Lewin's 1945 adaptation The Picture of Dorian Gray won awards for its memorable make-up but today it may as well be an artefact from the Victorian era in which the original novella was written. Worse was to follow. In 1983, Tony (The Burning) Maylam's TV version 'The Sins Of Dorian Gray' turned Dorian into Dora, missing the homoerotic subtext ever so slightly. The ageless aristo popped up again in 2003's The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a film so bad it made Sean Connery retire, but the cream of the crap is definitely 2001's Dorian. Set in the fashion industry and co-starring Malcolm McDowell (bless him, but never necessarily a guarantee of quality), it resembled a mullet-heavy, intrigue-free episode of 'Baywatch Nights'. Really, you wonder if there isn't a perfect version locked away in someone's attic while these ugly cousins stomp the earth. On this basis, Oliver (The Importance Of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband) Parker's film is undoubtedly the pick of the bunch. Well-performed, faithful in spirit and reasonably compelling throughout, it still can't solve the book's central problem. It's either a metaphor for closet homosexuality or a story about a scary painting, neither of which is particularly shocking in these days of torture porn and onscreen penetration. Arriving in London to claim his inheritance, Dorian (Ben Barnes) models for over-appreciative artist Basil Hallward (Ben Chaplin), before being tutored in the dark arts of the dandy by Henry Wotton (Colin Firth). We all know the drill from hereon in, though Toby Finlay's dutiful screenplay conjures a daughter (Rebecca Hall) for Henry, a Tube-tunnel-set chase (!) and some entertaining society swordsmanship for Dorian without disgracing itself. Though several generations of ladies will be rubbing their knees at all the man-totty, the three leads only seem to have eyes for each other, and the early scenes thrum with the possibility of a showstopping threeway that, perhaps for the best, never quite emerges. Changing from a Gump-ish and gullible youth to a blackened husk of a man, Dorian is a difficult part, ably managed by rising star Barnes (Prince Caspian), particularly when he's ripping bodices left, right and centre. Chaplin remains one of our most underrated screen actors, chiefly because only Terrence Malick seems to know what to do with him. But it's Firth that's the real revelation, spouting Blackadder-ish barbs from the sidelines as Wilde's onscreen stand-in. One chap, he notes, is dressed like a "badly bound hymnbook". Another is "a philosopher of pure folly". Though he brings London - from the stately City to the gin-sodden slums - effectively to life, Parker has a tendency to announce things a few decibels louder than required. Thus the orgies have the timbre of perfume ads, grumbling horror effects accompany each sighting of the painting and the ghosts of 'Carry On' and Hammer haunt the margins. Though never less than enjoyable, for all its wit and wisdom, the film sometimes feels like a stiff set text rather than an entity in its own right; a handsome facsimile of a thing that once lived. Indeed, what sticks in the mind most is the gaps Wilde draws between restrained society and the animalian impulses of the men who inhabit it. Some things, it seems, never really change. Verdict Wilde survives intact - and with some flair - although the results will do more for sixth-form literature students and their teachers than for film connoisseurs. |
