Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2530 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-05-08
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 114 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The beautifully sculpted face of Johnny Depp fits right in with this masterpiece of design. The Libertine--filmed in a grainy, color-muted chiaroscuro--captures the lush costumes, extravagant decor, and remarkable filth of Restoration England. John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester (Depp), warns the audience at the very beginning of the film that they will not like him. From there, he treats his wife cruelly, drinks to relentless excess, abuses his friendships, and generally wallows in dissipation, much to the dismay of King Charles II (John Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons), who hopes that Rochester will write a play glorifying his reign.

But Rochester finds his true inspiration (and the movie comes to life) when he sees a young actress named Lizzie Barry (Samantha Morton, Minority Report, Morvern Callar). Rochester sets out to make her the greatest actress of their time--and she, with some reluctance, submits to his teaching. The weakness of The Libertine is not that Rochester is unlikable; it's that he doesn't want to do anything. Barry galvanizes the movie because she burns with ambition, but Rochester's only apparent aim in life is an agonizingly slow self-destruction.

Still, The Libertine has lurid Saturnalian visions, Morton is superb, Malkovich gives a typically insidious turn, and Depp, as always, finds moments of sad poetry in the bitterest of speeches. --Bret Fetzer

Synopsis
An antidote to the sunny period pieces adopted from Jane Austen, which feature impeccably coifed aristocrats engaging in the witty banter of drawing room dramas and culminating in most delightful denouements, THE LIBERTINE highlights the underbelly of the British aristocracy of centuries past. Adapted from the play by Stephen Jeffreys, the plot follows the dastardly debauchery of the Earl of Rochester (a mischievous Johnny Depp), a hedonist who makes Oscar Wilde seem moralistic. The Earl spends his days and nights in beds, brothels, and bars, awakening from drunken blackouts only to stumble to the nearest whorehouse. Yet this ravishing rake also possesses a talent for poetry, and turns his escapades into acid-tongued witticisms that pepper this frisky film. Directed by first-timer Laurence Dunmore, the historical film picks up in 1678, when the Earl returns to London at the behest of King Charles II (magnetically played by John Malkovich, who starred in the play when it was staged at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre). With his young wife in tow, the Earl immediately immerses himself into a litany of transgressions. When he meets a prostitute and burgeoning actress named Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton), he obsessively takes her under his wing, crafting her into an acclaimed stage starlet and eventually bedding her. What follows is a spiral upward, downward, and sideways through the city's pleasure palaces, culminating in a quasi-tragic, quasi-relieving denouement. Melding the naughty energy of his 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' character with the brooding darkness of his wearied detective in 'From Hell', Depp gives a pitch-perfect performance that carries the film, eliciting strange sympathy for such a despicable devil. The score, by the award-winning composer Michael Nyman, adds even further moodiness and dramatic edge to the story.

Customer Reviews

A Drink Too Far
This film has much to recommend it: the performances are uniformly good, especially those of Depp and Morton; the script is wry and intelligent; the depiction of 17th century England is uncompromising; and the music by Michael Nyman is as rhythmically haunting as ever. Why then does this movie not quite work?

Perhaps because The Libertine fails to engage on an emotional level. The movie is concerned primarily with an intellectual, rather than a personal, analysis of morality, and thus leaves the viewer feeling cold and unmoved. It is difficult to sympathise with any of the characters, even those who clearly deserve our sympathy.

If the rating system allowed I would give four stars for the performances and the production design. But overall, due to the film's somewhat sterile heart, I can only give it three.

fans of ye foul debauched....look no further!
Great film with flamboyance, camp dress design and witty repartee aplenty with Depp once again proving that he is the most versitile and talented actor of his generation.
If you like debauched and rakish behaviour (but don't have the courage to carry these foul attributes out) then watch this film and enjoy the fun from the sofa with a bottle of wine, brandy, ale......

Fine acting weighed down by directorial baggage
At the beginning of this lusty Restoration romp (aren't all Restoration plays lusty romps?), John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, bearing more than a passing resemblance to a sultry, bewigged Johnny Depp, launches into a prologue in which he declares that we will not like him. Women will loathe his debauchery and men will be envious - a sure sign that this anti-hero will leave us all gagging for more!

Rochester ultimately pays for his philandering with his nose, half his face literally eaten away by the ravages of syphillis - though you might argue that this price is bestowed upon him for the sin of shocking the nation and his patron, the King, to his and its moral core through the production of A Satyr on Charles II. Worse still, the implication that his religious sin of being atheistic is ultimately to blame. A crude weapon in the scriptwriter's armoury, to be sure.

Alas, while I found Depp's character feisty and cynical, the same can not really be said for the film as a whole. The romp becomes weighed down with its own portentiousness, dull where it should sparkle, and rambling where its plotline should fizz. And forgive me if I missed the point, but the greenish tinge and grainy footage achieved precisely....what? Laurence Dunmore has sabotaged his own film by trying to be too clever. A simpler and more light-hearted approach would have been so much more effective.

Struggling against the directorial baggage, Depp does a fine job. Credit also to Morton, who is first rate as the feeble actor honed to perfection by Rochester, who falls in love with her but is finally rejected. Pike is as ravishing as ever, though Malkovitch looks decidedly uncomfortable, as indeed does Johnny Vegas, perhaps less surprisingly so. Anyone recognise Jack Davenport and Richard Coyle, both of Coupling fame?

So four stars for the cast, not many for the director, screenwriter or cinematographer. An opportunity missed, more's the pity.