I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The greatest movie ever made..!

Sadly Over-hyped

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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.

Carrington is directed by Christopher Hampton, is based on the book by Michael Holroyd and stars Emma Thompson, Jonathan Pryce, Jeremy Northam and Samuel West.This powerful and deeply moving true story has a superb cast,beautiful locations,beautiful music and shows that love can be painful at times.Young painter Dora Carrington(Emma Thompson)is introduced to famous Victorian bohemian Lytton Strachy(Jonathon Pryce), he is a homosexual who at first thinks Carrington is a man(she has really short hair and wears mens clothes and he first sees only her back).The two become friends and Dora later falls in love with him and is heartbroken because they could never become a couple. The acting in this is stunning especially from Jonathan who bears a striking resemblance to Strachy and is just excellent in the part. A beautiful story of human frailty,struggles and triumphs and an unforgettable love story.

This is a film for emos--middle-aged, malelike emos, with their brains stuffed full of cotton like a Quay brothers puppet. 'tis ever so dainty and genteel, to be sure; ever trembling at the verge; but the verge is one of farce, not tragedy. The subjects are a pair of silly-ass Edwardians--one of them Lytton Strachey--who couldn't...I mean to say, they couldn't possibly...could they?...but they do. At one point the woman sets about cutting off the man's big, bushy, Edward Lear beard, just to serve him right, but as the first snicker is about to be sneed, her hand is stayed by the onset of adoration. As they lounging in a meadow together, she confides that she would jolly well like him to kiss her, whereupon he, much struck by the novelty of the idea, exclaims, "D'ye know, I think I should like to!" The material cries out for an Alan Ayckbourn to exploit its absurdity, but here is instead is treated with the greatest doe-eyed tremulousness, eggshell-walking, and tea-party delicacy. It's like a trail left by an animal with the minutest frame of reference possible. That animal is probably a snail. Scene after scene inches its way along to a tiny little line of dialogue, of the d'ye-know-I-have-a-notion variety, which promises to set the drama going. Then the scene fades out and that's it, that little line was all it was building to: nothing comes of nothing. Ms. Thompson whines and mopes her way through her part in her patented way, which has much in common with Monty Python's invisible man. Seldom does the film, in its great daintiness, allow her or Mr. Pryce or anyone else to suggest any genuine interaction that was ever had between any genuine people. Except for the actors, I can't imagine any reason why anyone would want to go to see this. My reason was that I was catching up on the film work of Penelope Wilton, who plays Strachey's mother. Allowed half a chance, she and the character could have given the film a good boot in the arse, which it deserved, and would have profited by; but all they had a chance for was a little pinch on the arm. More than that would have disturbed the doilies.

Very few films send me here curious for reactions. This one did simply because I was wondering if anyone else had the feeling that the main male role was so noisome that how could anybody but a nut find him lovable. Well, that was not the case: most if not all accepted her love for him as something totally understandable. The guy was a jerk. Period. And ugly both inside and out, as well as full of empty comments on the ongoing scene and human dilemma. I kept watching only because of the remarkable performance by Thomson in the, and I do mean THE greatest masochist of all time. And some nice pictorals. That crazy house they lived in was really something. All said, purely my reaction: the guy was just too damned ugly, too not there for anybody with half a brain to want to hang around him long, much less half her life unless she was seriously stupid and sick.