♥♥♥♥♥
+ Best English Movie of the Year + Best Debut Movie of the Year + Most Undeserved Flop of the Year
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| Carnal lust, in the guise of Johnny Depp, looks you in the eyes on this poster for Laurence Dunmore's The Libertine |
The film revolves around the Earl Rochester in the late 17th century England: A man dedicated to plenty of copulation and drinking, often followed by creating spontaneous poetry, who was not always in his King Charles II's favor.
The Libertine is written by Stephen Jeffreys (Diana (2013)), based on his own play, and directed by debuting great English filmmaker Laurence Dunmore (The Parting Glass (2013), short). It is an undervalued period drama somewhat reminiscent of Milos Forman's universally lauded masterpiece Amadeus (1984) that holds stellar acting performances, led by an invigorating Johnny Depp (Black Mass (2015)), who has rarely been better on the silver screen than as the title libertine. Balancing love, desire and philosophy in spoken lines that continue to top each other in rhetorical and intellectual brilliance, it is particularly the writing that makes the film very worth watching.
Apart from a flourishing Depp, it is a distinct pleasure to see equally fine performances from some great supporting actors: John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire (1993)), who co-produced on top of playing the part of the pressured but cool-headed king; Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl (2014)) and Samantha Morton (The Messenger (2009)), who plays the whore actress that Earl Rochester falls for, is impressive here as so often before.
The photography is impeccably handled in a very organic fashion with lots of focus shifts by Alexander Melman (Downhill (2014)), and the picturesque style is very much ruled by a lighting concept of candlelight that seems as fleeting as the life portrayed in the pic. However, in terms of the color scheme, one could have wished for a bit more evolution as the story progressed. The whole film is held in mostly brown-green-bluish tones that seem to be testaments to the film's underlying theme of life's basic travesty. At other times the look of the film brings forth the feel of a very private bedchamber, and this, on the other hand, is noteworthy.
Michael Nyman (The Piano (1993)) has made the fine score, the last of his career, and Dien Van Straalen (Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003)) the befitting costumes.
The mystery of The Libertine is its director, , who debuted with the film. How a commercial and music video director gets to make a first film with world star Depp that gets to be as good as this is (at least to me) intriguing indeed. At the end of the day, however, The Libertine is also quite the old-fashioned wigs-and-face-powder period film. Despite its ceaseless preoccupation with cunts and cocks (not my words but the film's), - not a one is spotted. It is hedonism with a theatrical dignity that must be given a grade zero for graphic wildness. But this doesn't detract from it being nonetheless an outstanding film.
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Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 20 mil. $
Box office: 10.8 mil. $
= Huge flop (returned 0.54 times the cost)
[The Libertine premiered 16 September (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 114 minutes (UK), 130 minutes (US), - and this review is based on a 109 minute version. Shooting took place in Wales in the UK. The film opened #55 in 2 theaters to a 13k $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked at #12 and in 819 cinemas (different weeks) and grossed 4.8 mil. $ (44.4 % of the total gross). Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Italy with 1.9 mil. $ (17.6 %) and the UK with 1.1 mil. $ (10.2 %). The film went unreleased in many countries. At the British Independent Film Awards, the film was nominated in eight categories, winning one for Pike as Best Supporting Actor/Actress in a British Independent Film. Roger Ebert gave it a 3/4 star rating, translating to a notch harder than this review. Dunmore has not made another feature, but has made the short The Parting Glass (2013). Depp returned in the great Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005); Morton in River Queen (2005), and Malkovich in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005). The Libertine is rotten at 33 % and a 4.7/10 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Libertine?
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