The Hap­py Prince

Every­thing you need to know about Rupert Everett’s tonal­ly baf­fling yarn about the final years of Oscar Wilde is con­tained in this fact: he could have made it nine years ago with Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man in the lead, but he said no. Fast for­ward to the present day and, to the sat­is­fac­tion of the screen­writer (Everett), the role of Wilde is played by Everett. Hav­ing a pop at direct­ing for the first time is Everett.

This trio of names accu­rate­ly rep­re­sents what unfolds in front of the cam­era. Rupert James Hec­tor Everett has a glee­ful time ham­ming up a car­i­ca­ture of Ireland’s most endur­ing wit. Mean­while the sup­port­ing cast bat­tles to reg­is­ter per­for­mances of a more nat­u­ral­is­tic pitch, span­ning sto­ical (Edwin Thomas as the loy­al Rob­bie Ross) to cat­ty (Col­in Mor­gan as good-time babe Bosie) to tremu­lous (Emi­ly Wat­son scan­dalous­ly frit­tered as Wilde’s ail­ing and estranged wife Constance).

The set­ting is Paris, 1897 to ​’90. Wilde is liv­ing incog­ni­to under the pen name ​‘Sebas­t­ian Mel­moth’ after jail time for ​“sodomy and gross inde­cen­cy” – in oth­er words, for dar­ing to be an out, gay man in Vic­to­ri­an soci­ety. Green around the gills and soul­sick, he no longer sur­vives on writ­ing income but on aid from loy­al friends. Read­ings from his 1888 children’s sto­ry, ​‘The Hap­py Prince’, (pub­lished when Wilde was the toast of Lon­don) pro­vide a frame and the film camps out in its ethos of find­ing con­tent with­in humil­i­ty. Mar­i­nat­ed in Wilde’s sub­lime words, the down ​‘n’ out in Paris sit­u­a­tion has a gut­ter-poet­ry type of dig­ni­ty, replete with the usu­al bohemi­an trap­pings: absinthe, ele­gant speech­es and a much younger, paid-for boy.

Wilde liked to ​“live in the atmos­phere of love” and sen­su­al con­so­la­tions take the place of the real deal until a blast from the past arrives by train. Enter Lord Alfred Dou­glas aka Bosie aka the lover with whom Wilde enjoyed the pub­lic liai­son that led to his incar­cer­a­tion. Bosie is all sharply-planed cheek­bones and fam­i­ly mon­ey. To the despair of friends who want Wilde to behave dis­creet­ly, but to the plea­sure of audi­ences who enjoy scant­i­ly- clad male frol­ics, the pair embark on a hedo­nis­tic Euro­pean sortie.

Some­one who scans as the love of your life when life is charmed can take on a more con­di­tion­al qual­i­ty after a fall. Wilde is soon back in Paris lodg­ings, the worse for wear. If only Everett had trust­ed his dark mate­r­i­al and not seen fit to ​‘jazz’ it up with zany cam­era flour­ish­es and a jar­ring­ly loud and syrupy score. Quotes from Wilde’s orig­i­nal works are shoe­horned into every avail­able gap, high­light­ing how far the inde­pen­dent efforts of The Everett Show fall from those of his muse.

Nonethe­less, there is a per­verse charm to watch­ing what is so clear­ly a pas­sion project dri­ven by a creator’s sin­cere desire to cel­e­brate a per­son­al hero. While the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing this chaot­ic and tonal­ly inco­her­ent biopic could not be rec­om­mend­ed on the grounds of art, there is a more per­sua­sive case to be made on the grounds of curios­i­ty, for it is proof pos­i­tive of the famous open­ing line from The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol: ​“Each man kills the thing he loves.”