I quite often see movies made of books I've read. Less often do I watch a film (or TV series in this case) and then read the book. But that's exactly what I did after watching The Line of Beauty on DVD. This BBC production of the superb Alan Hollinghurst novel, adapted for TV by Andrew Davies (the author of so many great adaptations for the BBC) is simply very good. It is perfectly cast and beautifully filmed. One of the best adaptations I've seen in a long time. It's very true to its source material yet at the same time can never replace reading the novel, which I strongly recommend anyone who enjoys beautiful writing, to do.
The setting is 1980s London, Thatcher is in power and our hero, young Nick Guest (a perfectly cast Dan Stevens), has just gained a first at Oxford. Newly uncloseted as gay, but still a virgin, he arrives to stay at the upscale London house of college friend Toby Fedden (Oliver Coleman), the son of newly elected pompous Tory MP Gerald Fedden (Tim McInnerny, just terrific in this role.) Also in the household are Gerald's rich and rather saintly wife Rachel (Alice Krige written forever into my heart as the Borg Queen unfortunately) and unstable, bipolar daughter Catherine, or The Cat, as she is known to the family (Hayley Atwell).
Nick is ostensibly studying for a PhD in the more obtuse aspects of the writing of Henry James, but mostly his time is spent pursuing his first lover, the beautiful but prosaic Leo (Don Gilet), and his first love, beauty. Cat becomes his confidante in his pursuit of Leo, and he in turn is supposed to keep an eye on her as she veers through life on a swerving path of extremes. Nick is an aesthete, unworldly in the games of politics and money that he finds himself observing, and perhaps just a little disingenuous. He himself comes from a more humble, country town background, and is rather in love with the Feddens' life of easy wealth and beautiful possessions, into which he slots readily.
This is played out against the back drop of the encroaching AIDS epidemic and Thatcher's politics. If Billy Elliot showcased one aspect of Thatcherism 'up North' in the 1980s, then this is one aspect of what was happening 'down South' in the same period. And in some ways, I guess it could be Britain's belated equivalent of Angels in America; Thatcher/Reagan politics and the onset of AIDS. Nick's affair with a beautiful but spoiled millionaire playboy, Wani Ouradi (Alex Wyndham), leads him into a cocaine fuelled life of high society parties, European travel, random sex and an esoteric, arty magazine (Ogee) and film which will never get made. Money is made and wasted with unconcern in this brave new Thatcher world. As his friends begin to get ill and die, Nick seems immune to it all, cocooned in the Fedden's beautiful home. But life begins to unravel as AIDS looms larger and larger, Cat denounces her father's extra marital affair to the press, hypocrisies are exposed and the family, of which he thought he was a part, ultimately closes ranks against Nick.
I can understand that if you never lived through the 80s in Britain, this may all seem like an interesting but rather unreal and irrelevant look back at recent history. I must be 3 or 4 years older than Nick, but unfortunately or fortunately I guess, depending on how you look at it I spent most of the 1980s working offshore, doing my small bit to keep the North Sea oil industry afloat and profitable, so much of what happened in London passed me by, and news was heard in occasional snippets, bookended by the shipping forecasts, when we could get the ship's radio to work.
Hideously expensive, hangover inducing Norwegian lager was our drug of choice. Come to think of it, most of Thatcherite economics was based on the bonanza of North Sea oil, so maybe I'm partly to blame? Anyway, I found it fascinating and terrific viewing. They captured the pomposities and hypocrisies of the era, the waste and excess so well, and the groveling of the MPs to "the Lady". It is also very funny in places. I can't recall if this is in the film as well as the book, but I am still smiling at Cat's description of a sequined Margaret Thatcher as resembling a Country and Western star. I wish I'd thought of that!
The setting is 1980s London, Thatcher is in power and our hero, young Nick Guest (a perfectly cast Dan Stevens), has just gained a first at Oxford. Newly uncloseted as gay, but still a virgin, he arrives to stay at the upscale London house of college friend Toby Fedden (Oliver Coleman), the son of newly elected pompous Tory MP Gerald Fedden (Tim McInnerny, just terrific in this role.) Also in the household are Gerald's rich and rather saintly wife Rachel (Alice Krige written forever into my heart as the Borg Queen unfortunately) and unstable, bipolar daughter Catherine, or The Cat, as she is known to the family (Hayley Atwell).
Nick is ostensibly studying for a PhD in the more obtuse aspects of the writing of Henry James, but mostly his time is spent pursuing his first lover, the beautiful but prosaic Leo (Don Gilet), and his first love, beauty. Cat becomes his confidante in his pursuit of Leo, and he in turn is supposed to keep an eye on her as she veers through life on a swerving path of extremes. Nick is an aesthete, unworldly in the games of politics and money that he finds himself observing, and perhaps just a little disingenuous. He himself comes from a more humble, country town background, and is rather in love with the Feddens' life of easy wealth and beautiful possessions, into which he slots readily.
This is played out against the back drop of the encroaching AIDS epidemic and Thatcher's politics. If Billy Elliot showcased one aspect of Thatcherism 'up North' in the 1980s, then this is one aspect of what was happening 'down South' in the same period. And in some ways, I guess it could be Britain's belated equivalent of Angels in America; Thatcher/Reagan politics and the onset of AIDS. Nick's affair with a beautiful but spoiled millionaire playboy, Wani Ouradi (Alex Wyndham), leads him into a cocaine fuelled life of high society parties, European travel, random sex and an esoteric, arty magazine (Ogee) and film which will never get made. Money is made and wasted with unconcern in this brave new Thatcher world. As his friends begin to get ill and die, Nick seems immune to it all, cocooned in the Fedden's beautiful home. But life begins to unravel as AIDS looms larger and larger, Cat denounces her father's extra marital affair to the press, hypocrisies are exposed and the family, of which he thought he was a part, ultimately closes ranks against Nick.
I can understand that if you never lived through the 80s in Britain, this may all seem like an interesting but rather unreal and irrelevant look back at recent history. I must be 3 or 4 years older than Nick, but unfortunately or fortunately I guess, depending on how you look at it I spent most of the 1980s working offshore, doing my small bit to keep the North Sea oil industry afloat and profitable, so much of what happened in London passed me by, and news was heard in occasional snippets, bookended by the shipping forecasts, when we could get the ship's radio to work.
Hideously expensive, hangover inducing Norwegian lager was our drug of choice. Come to think of it, most of Thatcherite economics was based on the bonanza of North Sea oil, so maybe I'm partly to blame? Anyway, I found it fascinating and terrific viewing. They captured the pomposities and hypocrisies of the era, the waste and excess so well, and the groveling of the MPs to "the Lady". It is also very funny in places. I can't recall if this is in the film as well as the book, but I am still smiling at Cat's description of a sequined Margaret Thatcher as resembling a Country and Western star. I wish I'd thought of that!