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Bright Young Things, Wicker Park
9-8-04 Knight at the Movies column
By Richard Knight, Jr.
Bright Young Things, Wicker Park
9-8-04 Knight at the Movies column
By Richard Knight, Jr.
Oh those crazy Brits, oh that boring Josh Hartnett
Everything old is new again and Bright Young Things, the first film directed by openly gay actor Stephen Fry is perfect proof of
that cliché. Based on Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 novel “Vile Bodies,” the movie takes place in London at the closing of the Jazz Age but
the hedonistic pursuits of the resident “madcap” set referred to in the title are the same as those of any other memorable Youth
Quake moment in club culture history.
It’s not hard to imagine this group of hardened sybarites kicking up their platform heels at Studio 54, snorting everything in sight at
Limelight in the 1980s or falling into K Holes at one of those club kid parties that were so popular in the mid to late 1990s. What’s
harder to do is care about these All About Me types as the movie and the characters age from bright to dark. But before the lights
dim there’s plenty of vim and verve from this collected group of Me Firsts and Fry has done his best to translate them to the screen.
Adam Symes (Stephen Campbell), the poor but terribly witty chronicler of his rich and beautiful friends, has written a Roman á clef
about them (called “Bright Young Things” naturally) that is seized by the customs department for “indecency” as he is trying to re-
enter England. This prevents any further monetary advances from his publisher (Dan Akroyd) and puts up another roadblock in his
plan to marry the beautiful but bored Nina (Emily Mortimer) as Adam once again is without funds. What else to do but attend
another party?
Fry then gives us two: the first shot through a red filter and populated by attendants in red devil costumes and the second in shades
of blue. We meet the rest of the Bright Young Things (BYT’s) at these parties. They all sort of meld together while clamoring for
more thrills and loudly declaring their boredom. The most memorable is the gay fop Miles who wants a piano but settles instead for
cocaine and the young male gossip columnist Sneath who narrowly escapes the party after being spotted. After skulking away he
breathlessly phones in this report to his newspaper: “Be glad you have nothing to do with this world. Its glamour is a delusion, it’s
speed a snare, its music a scream of fear.” Sneath, called Photo-Rat by the BYT’s, then makes up a slew of wicked stories about
everyone present and having had the last word puts his head in the oven for good measure.
But the party swirls on nonplussed as Adam continues to come up with different schemes to make enough money to satisfy Nina,
Miles suddenly has to leave the country to avoid prosecution for being a homosexual (after the police discover letters to his racecar
driver lover) and the blond BYT, whose name I never quite caught, has a nervous breakdown and celebrates that with a cocktail party
while in the sanitarium. WWII intercedes and instantly the public’s fascination with the fluffy ones disappears. It’s time to Grow Up
and put away childish things for the BYT’s but the film (and I would imagine, the book) suffers for it.
Fry’s love for this material is palpable. He not only wrote and directed but he also executive produced and has from the looks of it,
done those jobs very well. Casting, however, is another story and is the movie’s greatest drawback. These supposedly outrageous
characters are played by the most unexciting lot of actors imaginable. And by adding cameos by Stockard Channing, Jim Broadbent,
Peter O’Toole and others, Fry emphasizes this. The dullest of the dull are the two leads: Campbell, with his flared nostrils, is blandly
handsome and not particularly vivid and is matched in mediocrity by Mortimer’s kitten with a whip Nina. Variations on these two
characters were played in Cabaret by Michael York and Liza Minnelli and by George Preppard and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At
Tiffany’s. Would that Fry have been so lucky, with his directorial debut, to have had either pair – or younger versions of O’Toole and
Channing as his leads – all things would have been bright and beautiful instead of murky and mediocre.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Oh what a wicked web we weave” my friend Victor whispered to me during yet another confusing plot twist in the new Hitchcock
Vertigo rip-off, Wicker Park. “And weave and weave and weave” I retorted as we both nodded in unison. By the time this
incoherent mess wrapped up, the web included parts of The Birds, large doses of Single White Female, Strangers On A Train and Laura.
Josh Hartnett, who must have a very active Tiger Beat fan club (how else to explain his continued film employment?), plays the title
role of an artsy photographer gone corporate obsessed with finding his lost love who is, of course, a ballet dancer. Several of the
locations seen a few seasons back on the Chicago edition of “The Real World” can be spotted and just like that reality series, none
of the characters or situations here is remotely believable or involving (it also makes perfect idiotic sense that most of Wicker Park
was shot in Montreal). A stinker.
that cliché. Based on Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 novel “Vile Bodies,” the movie takes place in London at the closing of the Jazz Age but
the hedonistic pursuits of the resident “madcap” set referred to in the title are the same as those of any other memorable Youth
Quake moment in club culture history.
It’s not hard to imagine this group of hardened sybarites kicking up their platform heels at Studio 54, snorting everything in sight at
Limelight in the 1980s or falling into K Holes at one of those club kid parties that were so popular in the mid to late 1990s. What’s
harder to do is care about these All About Me types as the movie and the characters age from bright to dark. But before the lights
dim there’s plenty of vim and verve from this collected group of Me Firsts and Fry has done his best to translate them to the screen.
Adam Symes (Stephen Campbell), the poor but terribly witty chronicler of his rich and beautiful friends, has written a Roman á clef
about them (called “Bright Young Things” naturally) that is seized by the customs department for “indecency” as he is trying to re-
enter England. This prevents any further monetary advances from his publisher (Dan Akroyd) and puts up another roadblock in his
plan to marry the beautiful but bored Nina (Emily Mortimer) as Adam once again is without funds. What else to do but attend
another party?
Fry then gives us two: the first shot through a red filter and populated by attendants in red devil costumes and the second in shades
of blue. We meet the rest of the Bright Young Things (BYT’s) at these parties. They all sort of meld together while clamoring for
more thrills and loudly declaring their boredom. The most memorable is the gay fop Miles who wants a piano but settles instead for
cocaine and the young male gossip columnist Sneath who narrowly escapes the party after being spotted. After skulking away he
breathlessly phones in this report to his newspaper: “Be glad you have nothing to do with this world. Its glamour is a delusion, it’s
speed a snare, its music a scream of fear.” Sneath, called Photo-Rat by the BYT’s, then makes up a slew of wicked stories about
everyone present and having had the last word puts his head in the oven for good measure.
But the party swirls on nonplussed as Adam continues to come up with different schemes to make enough money to satisfy Nina,
Miles suddenly has to leave the country to avoid prosecution for being a homosexual (after the police discover letters to his racecar
driver lover) and the blond BYT, whose name I never quite caught, has a nervous breakdown and celebrates that with a cocktail party
while in the sanitarium. WWII intercedes and instantly the public’s fascination with the fluffy ones disappears. It’s time to Grow Up
and put away childish things for the BYT’s but the film (and I would imagine, the book) suffers for it.
Fry’s love for this material is palpable. He not only wrote and directed but he also executive produced and has from the looks of it,
done those jobs very well. Casting, however, is another story and is the movie’s greatest drawback. These supposedly outrageous
characters are played by the most unexciting lot of actors imaginable. And by adding cameos by Stockard Channing, Jim Broadbent,
Peter O’Toole and others, Fry emphasizes this. The dullest of the dull are the two leads: Campbell, with his flared nostrils, is blandly
handsome and not particularly vivid and is matched in mediocrity by Mortimer’s kitten with a whip Nina. Variations on these two
characters were played in Cabaret by Michael York and Liza Minnelli and by George Preppard and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At
Tiffany’s. Would that Fry have been so lucky, with his directorial debut, to have had either pair – or younger versions of O’Toole and
Channing as his leads – all things would have been bright and beautiful instead of murky and mediocre.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Oh what a wicked web we weave” my friend Victor whispered to me during yet another confusing plot twist in the new Hitchcock
Vertigo rip-off, Wicker Park. “And weave and weave and weave” I retorted as we both nodded in unison. By the time this
incoherent mess wrapped up, the web included parts of The Birds, large doses of Single White Female, Strangers On A Train and Laura.
Josh Hartnett, who must have a very active Tiger Beat fan club (how else to explain his continued film employment?), plays the title
role of an artsy photographer gone corporate obsessed with finding his lost love who is, of course, a ballet dancer. Several of the
locations seen a few seasons back on the Chicago edition of “The Real World” can be spotted and just like that reality series, none
of the characters or situations here is remotely believable or involving (it also makes perfect idiotic sense that most of Wicker Park
was shot in Montreal). A stinker.