I quite enjoyed this, but I'm not wholly sure why.
The story was a little muddled in places, at least in terms of consistency, motivation and the like. But the performances were mostly pleasing, not least Billy Crudup who came over as very engaging despite playing a character whose behaviour was at times gratuitously unpleasant.
Rupert Everett was a hoot.
I have a problem with Claire Danes. I like her, but I'm not convinced she's actually all that good an actress. This feeling seems to be driven by one of her facial expressions which gets massively overused (it shows up here, and also in Stardust and Little Women - I've seen all three films fairly recently), and it's the expression where she looks as if someone has just delivered themselves of the most offensively malodorous flatulence directly under her nose. I'm sure you know the one I mean - if you've seen any of those films, then you're bound to know. And it's an all purpose expression for anything bad, from mild worry to just survived a murder attempt. On the other hand, she does a creditable English accent (as does Crudup in this film).
Oh, and I suspect that in Restoration England, it was most unlikely that anyone would say, "Get the f*** off my stage" notwithstanding the provenance of f*** as good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon of the first order. An unwelcome anachronistic Americanism, as out of place as mammoths in Egypt.
Whoops, I'm getting ahead of myself.....
The story was a little muddled in places, at least in terms of consistency, motivation and the like. But the performances were mostly pleasing, not least Billy Crudup who came over as very engaging despite playing a character whose behaviour was at times gratuitously unpleasant.
Rupert Everett was a hoot.
I have a problem with Claire Danes. I like her, but I'm not convinced she's actually all that good an actress. This feeling seems to be driven by one of her facial expressions which gets massively overused (it shows up here, and also in Stardust and Little Women - I've seen all three films fairly recently), and it's the expression where she looks as if someone has just delivered themselves of the most offensively malodorous flatulence directly under her nose. I'm sure you know the one I mean - if you've seen any of those films, then you're bound to know. And it's an all purpose expression for anything bad, from mild worry to just survived a murder attempt. On the other hand, she does a creditable English accent (as does Crudup in this film).
Oh, and I suspect that in Restoration England, it was most unlikely that anyone would say, "Get the f*** off my stage" notwithstanding the provenance of f*** as good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon of the first order. An unwelcome anachronistic Americanism, as out of place as mammoths in Egypt.
Whoops, I'm getting ahead of myself.....