DORIAN GRAY - a mess

In recent years, filmgoers have been treated to some rather lovely adaptations of Oscar Wilde's work, not least director Oliver Parker's AN IDEAL HUSBAND. Therefore, I was rather hopeful about Parker's adaptation of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. However, Dorian Gray is a very different beast to Wilde's society plays. They dealt with issues of contemporary morality, certainly, but in light atmosphere. By contrast, Dorian Gray is a pyschological novel, dealing with debauchery and corruption, using the genre tropes of gothic horror. The key question was whether Oliver Parker's directing style - high-gloss Merchant Ivory with whimsical modern touches - would be flexible enough to grapple with a meatier book.

The novel opens in late nineteenth century London. Talented artist Basil Hallward falls in love with handsome young Dorian Gray while painting his picture. Of course, there is no crude declaration of love given that homosexuality is taboo, but sublimated "ownership" of Gray's social life. This is put under threat when Dorian becomes fascinated with Basil's friend Lord Henry Wootton - a man who, while a member of the British establishment at the height of Victorian prudery, preaches a life of unrestrained sensuality. Encouraged by the man he admires, falling prey to narcissism seeing the finished portrait, Dorian starts to value beauty and art above all else, casually wishing that he could remain as young and beautiful as his portrait. He callously rejects his young lover Sibyl Vane when her talent fades and learns that his casual wish has been fulfilled: the wages of sin show on the portrait but he remains outwardly youthful and innocent.

With this apparent freedom, Dorian degenerates into a life of excess and cruelty - sexual encounters straight and gay, and eventually to blackmail and murder. It is here that Wilde most brilliantly takes aestheticism to its logical conclusion - positing that crime is merely, as art, "a means of procuring sensation". Eighteen years later, returned from his travels, Dorian tries to turn his life around, looking to his portrait as the ultimate barometer of authentic repentance. In this latter portion of the book, we are privy to some of the most high-stakes soul-searching in modern literature. Wilde, an artist who turned his life into art, simultaneously warns us of the dangers of so doing - themes he later explored in De Profundis. A the end of novel, order is restored: art is restored, in its frame, beautiful - life is separated from it, real, variegated.

The new movie of Dorian Gray is, essentially, a failure. Director Oliver Parker and debutant screenwriter Toby Finlay, fail to translate the feeling of menace and corruption to screen, condensing crucial episodes (Sibyl Vane) and introducing new material that amps up the Hollywood action and romance for crass commercial reasons. Ben Barnes is mis-cast as Dorian. He just doesn't have the acting chops to depict inward moral disintegration in the way that, say, Al Pacino did in the GODFATHER movies. Colin Firth is also mis-cast as the corrupting Sir Henry Wootton. He just can't play sinister. Imagine how much better this movie would have been with Eddie Redmayne and Jeremy Irons in the lead roles. In terms of execution, the movie features some of the most unsexy orgy scenes since EYES WIDE OPEN and some of the cheapest CGI. The only plus points are the lovely costunes, settings and the breath of fresh air that is Rebecca Hall's performance as the newly invented daughter of Sir Henry.

DORIAN GRAY is on release in the UK and played Toronto 2009. It will be released in Italy on October 23rd, in Australia on November 12th and in Finland on Christmas Day.

CASHBACK - worked better as a short

CASHBACK is a visually stylish, low-budget British art-flick by Sean Ellis. It's based on an Oscar-nominated short that is provocative, weirdly funny and tightly structured. Sean Biggerstaff plays an art student who dumps his girlfriend and then can't sleep. So, to kill time, he takes a job working nights in a supermarket, where he wrily comments on his fellow in-mates and visualises all the shoppers naked, as in life-drawing class.

In this full-length movie, the fiscally prudent Ellis has used all the footage from his short, and padded it out with extra storylines and more fantasy nudity. Personally, I feel the extreme, bizarre style of the original worked best as a short and that the nocturnal imaginings seem leery when populating a full length film.

CASHBACK played Toronto 2006 and opened in Belgium, France, Israel, Canada, Bulgaria, South Korea, Turkey, Greece, Hong Kong, Sweden, the Netherlands, Australa, the USA, Singapore and Denmark in 2007. It opened in Japan, Spain, Mexico, Portugal and the UK earlier this year. It is now on release in DVD.

FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL - a melancholy drama about guilt and fear

The first half hour of Baillie Walsh's intriguing movie is a witty indictment of the savage superificiality of Hollywood. Daniel Craig plays Joe Scott - a self-indulgent, narcissistic, ageing Hollywood star whose cocaine-fuelled lifestyle has alienated his personal assistant (Eve) and his agent (Mark Strong in a fantastic suit and an even better accent). The death of Joe's child-hood best friend leads him to drunken reflection and takes the movie into an extended hour-long flash-back sequence. Amid the pitch-perfect bric-a-brac of 70s Britain, a teenage Joe (Harry Eden) demonstrates that character is fate. He could've had the life of his best friend Boots, dating a local schoolgirl called Ruth. But instead, he drifts into a relationship with a predatory older woman (Jodhi May) only to be brought up short by the consequences of the relationship. Guilt-ridden, he runs away, and presumably kept running all the way to Hollywood and the ultimate life of no consequences, until his past catches up with him.

FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL has much to recommend it. It's patient, intelligent, the characters seem credible and the period detail of 1970s Britain is impressive. The use of period music in the score is absolutely spot-on, and special mention must be given to John Mathieson's wonderful photography. The cast is good, with Helen McCrory and Miriam Karlin particularly good in smaller roles. The only slight mis-step is in the final segment, where the ageing star returns to Britain. On his way to confront the grieving widow he makes a statement about how standing still is more courageous than taking action which seems utterly trite and belies the more enigmatic atmosphere of the rest of the film. In addition, I feel Claire Forlani is mis-cast or perhaps mis-dressed (is that even a word?) as the widow. In her Tiffany necklace, skinny jeans, riding boots and perfect make-up, she looks nothing like the widow of a heavily indebted, poverty-stricken rural Briton.

These quibbles aside, FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL is a melancholy, visually impressive movie that deserves attention.

FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL is on release in the UK and opens in Portugal on June 5th.

KEEPING MUM - Alleged comedy about an axe-wielding au-pair that is significantly less funny than you might think from that description

KEEPING MUM is a movie made in the “British Nanny” genre. This includes many movies which are not in fact British and do not feature British characters, or even a nanny. But you know what I mean. They are movies like Nanny McPhee, The Sound of Music or Don’t tell Mom, The Babysitter’s Dead. There is a family that is troubled – the kids are unruly, the parents in difficulty – but nothing actually dysfunctional. In walks the nanny figure, who may or may not actually be a nanny. He/she starts cooking, cleaning and sorting out the local bully, and before you know it, everything is hunky-dory again. Generally speaking, I don’t mind these movies. They plug a gap in the market for safe kiddie-friendly films, and leave you with a generally warm feeling – as if all of life’s problems could be solved with some home-made scones and a cheery tune.

However, in order to bask in the audiences collective good-will, these movies need to get two things right. First, they need to have genuinely engaging and sympathetic characters. I don’t need to find the characters plausible, I just need to be happy to spend two hours in their company. Second, there have to be some good gags.

All of which brings me round to telling you why I think KEEPING MUM is a cinematic stinker. In features a bunch of great British character actors being self-absorbed and mean, even after the Nanny arrives. We have Rowan Atkinson as a vicar who is too busy with work to pay attention to his wife, and then post-nanny, too busy with his wife to pay attention to his parishioners. His wife, played by the usually marvellous Kristin Scott Thomas, is having an affair with a lecherous golf-pro, played by Patrick Swayze. She decides to chuck in her husband almost on a whim and post-Nanny undergoes a highly ridiculous conversion into…well, that would ruin the alleged plot-twist.

The second problem is that the script does not contain enough funny material. Somewhere out there there’s probably a great film about an axe-murdering au pair, but this just isn’t it. Even Swayze in a posing pouch doesn’t raise a titter, and while he does languish in sleaze, this isn’t as blackly funny a role as the one he took in Donnie Darko. Even when Rowan Atkinson gets transformed into a “funny” vicar, and is supposedly packing in the audiences with his side-splitting homilies, I could still not detect a joke. Sucks.

KEEPING MUM is now available on Region 2 DVD. But then again, so is CATWOMAN, but you don't see me renting that either.