Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2883 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-09-22
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 117 minutes

Synopsis
Emma Thompson stars as young, boyish and vivacious painter Dora Carrington, with Jonathan Pryce as writer and conscientious objector Lytton Strachey, the unobtainably gay man, that she loves passionately. Directed by Christopher Hampton (DANGEROUS LIAISONS) this unorthodox love-story is based on the real events in Dora's life surrounding the bohemian Bloomsbury art group where her attraction for the bearded bon vivant Strachey began. Having found her intellectual soul mate, she finds herself indulging in sexual escapades with many young attractive men to drown her undying love for the distinguished author, whose physical love she will never win. Starring San West, Rufus Sewell and Steven Waddington as the men she hopes will save her from the spell Strachey unwittingly has over her. Michael Nyman's sumptuous and yearning score is utterly beautiful and fittingly heartbreaking. The film won the 1996 Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

Customer Reviews

excellent
This has got to be one of the best movies I have ever watched, but is certainly a movie that requires and deserves to be watched by those who apreciate the fantastic story and acting. If you are looking for action movies don't look here, but if you like movies that are moving and deeply emotional then this might be a movie for you. I cried buckets at the end without the movie being predictable or "soppy" and best of all...it tells the story of real people and makes one think of those poor real characters. All acting was highly professional and to the highest standard in my oppinion, but Pryce was second to none. Highly recomended if you like myself like beautiful but deep movies.

An extraordinary illustration of human nature and love!!!
This is one of the most touching and yet intelligent films I have seen in a long time. The posibility of loving more than one person is very delicately explored, wihtout offending anyone.The scenery is gorgeous as are the interpretations of the characters by the actors, especially Emma Thompson. This film explores the human mind and heart and its reactions and various expressions of love. If ever there was a film trully expressing everyone's questions on love between people, this is it!

Pryce and Thompson in a true tale of a great platonic love
There is probably some profoundly deep irony to the idea that the writer Lytton Strachey was informed by Virginia Woolf that the ravishing young boy he had his eye on was really a woman, the painter Dora Carrington, but it remains outside of my grasp at this point. However, I am not surprised that this story of a profound platonic love between two people is taken from the pages of history, because Hollywood is rarely inclined of the consummations it routinely wishes (remember, the classic tale of Cyrano de Bergerac comes from a play and was not written directly for the screen).

Strachey, Carrington, Woolf and most of the other characters in this 1995 film were members of the Bloomsbury Group, all of whom were eccentric British geniuses who explored the dynamics of human relationships in strange ways when they were not busy exorcising their artistic impulses. In a masterful understated performance Jonathan Pryce plays Lytton, who was a quiet, dry witted, reserved homosexual in his thirties when he met Carrington, played by Emma Thompson, who was 15 years younger and still a virgin. Their first meetings and the strange attraction that would bind them for the rest of their lives are sketched out in the first several scenes. The explanation for why they would live together while loving others is developed throughout the rest of the film. What becomes clear is that no matter who Lytton and Carrington took into their respective beds, or shared between them for that matter, no one mattered more to them. Ultimately, the tragedy of their relationship is not the absence of the physical dimension, but, as is often the case with most relationships, the failure of both to articulate the depth of their feelings to the other until fate cruelly rectifies that error.

Thompson's character is on a par with the other victims of unrequited love she has played with great success in "Howard's End" and "The Remains of the Day." Writer-Director Christopher Hampton, working from Michael Holroyd's book on Lytton Strachey, expands her character through Carrington's art: she must have painted every corner of Ham Spray House, where they lived in Berkshire. She is the film's title character, not only because she survives Lytton, but because after they met and became friends (pure understatement, I assure you) she continued to pursue other interests and people while he was remarkably contempt to enjoy those she brought into their small circle.

Still, it is Pryce's Lytton who is the captivating character. Like most British eccentrics he was a natural epigramist, but with a great sense of restraint, picking his moment for his one rapier thrust (even if it is on his own death bed). Carrington is the one who actively engages in the acts of intimacy between them while we have to remind our selves that Lytton's passive acceptance of it is out of a sense of propriety and not a lack of deep feelings. I have always had a strong affection for love stories that never enter the realm of the physical (is there a sexier scene in movies that the dance in "The King and I"?), and "Carrington" is a film in that tradition, especially for those with an affection for British period dramas.