Carrington

Jonathan Pryce as Lytton Strachey, Emma Thompson as Carrington

Christopher Hampton's Carrington, from 1995, chronicles the relationship between painter Dora Carrington and literary butterfly Lytton Strachey. The two shared a lifelong love, a mostly platonic one due to Strachey's homosexuality.  The film fails as a portrait of the two, but is entertaining enough as a soap opera featuring the muffled passions of the Bloomsbury set.

Hampton provides little family or social background to his main characters. Mentions are dropped of  Strachey's pacifism and Carrington's Bolshevism, but only a vague sense of political ideation is given. Similarly, the lead duo's aesthetic leanings and motivations are not plumbed. We see Strachey writing and hear about the success of  Eminent Victorians, but his literary stance is not illuminated. We see Carrington at her easel, but are given no clue as to her taste, influences or inspiration. A line about art being her therapy is dropped, but never mentioned again.

Both lead performances are capable. However, despite the title, the film is weighted towards Strachey. Whether ogling a hack driver or mincing across a dance floor, Jonathan Pryce gives the film enough juice to keep the viewer interested. Later typecast as a villain or colorless functionary, Pryce gives the only full blooded impersonation in the film. There is a zest to his performance that provides a needed spark to a largely placid and picturesque period picture. I feel Emma Thompson was somewhat miscast as Carrington. Wearing a frugly pageboy, Thompson gamely tries to temper her grace and sex appeal in order to inhabit the gawky Dora. She never seems truly awkward, which is probably more Hampton's fault than hers. The notion of Carrington's frigidity is broached, shots of lovers pumping away on top of her as she registers discomfiture, but Hampton never explores her psychology. A similar thread of self-abasement is never pulled.

Hampton displays some visual talent here and there: some nice pastoral tracking shots and an interesting two shot of Strachey and Carrington lying on a roof. However, a number of moments come undone. An outdoor dance party is a choreographic fiasco: socialites alternately shimmy, frug and do the Charleston while "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" is played on a harmonium. The scene is edited chaotically as if someone wanted to hide its failure. Similarly, a brief fight scene, badly lit and blocked, is equally unconvincing. A scene meant to show Gerald Brenan's passion for Dora is so badly directed that it seems Brenan is suffering from indigestion and not thwarted desire.

Besides Caroline Amies stellar production design and Pryce's performance, the saving grace of the film is that Hampton is willing to poke fun at the Bloomsbury crowd's self-absorption. Otherwise, this portrait of the set's romantic misalliances would be under powering in its dispassionate ambivalence. For a juicy sidebar on this topic, I heartily recommend "I Married My Father's Lover -- Angelica Garnett" by Noreen Taylor which ran in The Times in June of 2001.