Review of A Handful of Dust

That Evelyn Waugh was a master of irony seems to have escaped the makers of "A handful of dust" who have consequently produced a movie that is a conventional tragedy. Marital infidelity is a theme he revisited often,here it is the key to the whole story,the catalyst that sets the terrible events in motion. Tony Last's wife is bored with him and his obsession with his crumbling ancestral home.She takes a lover,an archetypal 1930s "trimmer" called John Beaver,a strange young man who lives with his mother who has fallen on hard times. When the Last's young son is killed in a riding accident she judges the time right to announce she is marrying Beaver. Ever the gentleman,Last allows her to divorce him on the grounds of his "adultery" with a professional co - respondent in a Brighton hotel. Waugh,like Dickens,had a healthy disdain for the legal profession,and the lawyers'contempt for the law and their clients is abundantly clear. A series of not terribly convincing events sees Last ending up in South America doomed to read Charles Dickens in perpetuity to a very unpleasant Englishman who lives amongst the natives. His wife marries his best chum.Floreat Etona. As misery piles upon misery one longs for even the slightest sense that the makers of "A handful of dust" were aware that Waugh was having a gentle poke at the stupefyingly thick - headed upper classes and their hatred of "scenes" or any displays of emotion. If you need an example look no further than our own dear Royal Family. Mr R.Graves fails to give even the slightest clue as to why Last's wife should want to marry him.He is vacuous,dull and boring.Waugh's more famous trimmer was in fact called Trimmer("Men at arms")and despicable character though he may have been,seducer,thief and layabout,he was at least interesting. Miss Scott Thomas is superficially enchanting but it becomes clear as the story progresses that there is a lot less than meets the eye.Of all the actors,she alone seems to have a brush with humanity. Mr J.Wilby opens the movie as one kind of cliché and ends up as another.From Somerset Maugham to Joseph Conrad without a true moment along the way. The other parts are filled competently enough,indeed the whole film smacks of "competence",but,sadly,"competence"is not enough.