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47 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pryce and Thompson in a true tale of a great platonic love, 25 Oct 2003
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.
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