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India Press Store - The Line of Beauty
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List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $11.54
Your Save: $ 8.44 ( 42% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: BBC Warner
Starring: Dan Stevens, Tim McInnerny, Hayley Atwell, Alice Krige, Carmen du Sautoy
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0794051267320
Format: Closed-captioned
Label: BBC Warner
Manufacturer: BBC Warner
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: BBC Warner
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2006-10-17
Running Time: 177
Studio: BBC Warner
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: stays short of the novel but nice.
Comment: The actors do their best. The adaptation of the absoloutly stunning novel is probably as good as it gets. After all, all three parts are just over 3 hours, and the main topics are all treated quite satisfactually. If you liked the novel, you will at least enjoy this adaptation as well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a nuanced take
Comment: the prize winning book deserved a nuanced take to successfully be translated to the screen. what could have easily been turned into just another coming of age story is instead a tale of youth and homosexuality, in the time of Aids, infused with the consequences of closeness to those at the very top of the Thatcher government. the script and performances are superb, the pace unusually swift and accurate. very very good
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Life Perpetual Wandering
Comment: There is much to learn from UK's treatment of homosexuality in films. The subtle details of realism are often absent in American versions of the gay cinema. The story does not insult viewer's intelligence with some self-pity fest or wrap things up in an unbelievable Hollywood ending.
The undertone of the story is rather grim, much like Breakfast on Pluto. The future is viewed as bleak and hopeless. The way it unfolds is like Maurice, so it's not really for people with short attention span. Fortunately, the story is divided into three episodes, and can be viewed more or less independently. The story can sink one's heart rather deep, so be forewarned.
The main character is called Nick Guest. Like his name suggests, he could not find a place where he belonged. The way I see it, he is this paradigm figure that represents every gay man. He had fun, had made a career, while it lasted.... He thought he had love and friendship, but everything was but a grand illusion. Then he moved on again, with uncertainty.
The very last spoken line wrapped up everything.... When Nick decided to move on and move out of the house he had made it home for the last four years, he had a little chat with Elena. He recalled it was amusing he had mistaken the maid as the mistress of the house. Elena, however, spoke with a smiling indifference, "I knew from the first moment, you were no good." To me, that is the line that hurts the most; an in-your-face denial of the familial connection.
The film captures the essence of what is like to be gay very well (from a soul-searching perspective). It's not without flaw, however. I was quite baffled at how Nick could flip from sexually-inexperienced to someone who engaged public sex with a stranger. He also seemed to know how to do it (from behind) at his first try....
In any case, it's a good gay film that deserves to be called a drama (and not to be mistaken as a "drama" ;-)). Whole-heartedly recommended, but please watch it when you're not already too depressed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 80's hate fest
Comment: This British pot-boiler has one thing going for it: the young men are uniformly good looking. The older men are opinionated, right-wing Thatcherites whose behavior brings back all the acrimony of the Reagan/Thatcher years. Young or old, however, morals in this three-part mini-series are universally suspect and no one comes off particularly well.
Nick is a handsome young gay man fresh out of Oxford. It is not pivotal to the story, but he has an extraordinarily beautiful head of hair which makes watching this drivel much easier. Nick comes to London with a friend, whose father Gerald is a rich conservative politician, and babysits his sister Cat while the family frolics in the south of France. They neglect to inform him that, when upset, Cat cuts herself with an assortment of knives and other kitchen implements. Nick mistakes their self-serving `gratitude' for affection and moves in, finding out too late just how much they despise and patronize him. Inexplicably, Nick lives in this house for four years but, as the plot depends on this point, it's best not to question it.
While Nick is most pleasing to look at, he is unbearably obsequious. His coy subjection to rich bigots soon had me climbing the walls. Deeply closeted except to Cat (she guesses his big secret on sight), he does like a little anonymous sex just so we know he is actually gay. Though it hardly seems possible, Nick takes a lover who is even more closeted than he.
Supercilious Tories scorn and insult the two blacks in the film, so imagine the venom which spews forth when Nick's sexual orientation is reported in a tabloid. Gerald, in true Tory fashion, has become involved in several personal and financial scandals, so the revelations about Nick add to his embarrassment. This gives Gerald one final opportunity to roundly castigate the hapless boy.
Except for one brief moment of indignation, Nick takes the abuse heaped upon him in silence and tacit agreement. Denial, self-loathing, naivete, or ignorance? You decide, if you can manage to sit through this whole thing without throwing something at the set.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The price of priviledge
Comment: This three-part, three-hour drama, based on Alan Hollinghurst's novel of the same name, has much going for it. Taking place in 3 episodes in 1983, 1986, and 1987; many themes are explored with sensitivity and insight. However, I would like to focus this review on just one aspect of the film, which is the price of privilege.
Middle-class Nick Guest (played well by handsome Dan Stevens) is attracted to his best friend Toby Fedden (played by Oliver Coleman). When they graduate from Oxford, Nick comes to visit Toby in the Fedden's beautiful grand home in West London. Soon his gracious personality and wit and handsome appearance win over the entire family, especially daughter Catherine Fedden, a self-mutilator. Gerald the father (played to perfection by Tim McInnerny) and Rachael the mother (played by Alice Krige) run off the France leaving Nick to care for the house and for Catherine (nicknamed Cat). Dissonance immediately begins since the Feddens seem much to smart, sensitive, and informed to run off to France and leave a mentally ill daughter with a virtual stranger. Catherine and Nick soon however become best of friends since Catherine is fascinated with the fact that he is gay and she seeks non-sexual intimacy with him. She also specializes in penetrating hypocrisy, almost as if hypocrisy was unbearable to her. This is a trait that makes her a social and political liability for her parents. This is also the trait that drives the multiple tragedies of this story.
What kind of fellow is Nick? He lives in fabulous surroundings in a home where the father is a conservative member of parliament yet, as his name implies, he is a guest in this rare world of privilege and he done not yet know its price or the price others pay. Nick is a student of Henry James and wishes to go to graduate school to study James. However in the meantime he begins to explore his sexuality and soon begins an affair with a handsome Jamaican man, Leo, played by Dan Gilet. This allows for more exploration of conservative hostility toward persons of color which is contrasted with Nick's erotic attraction to warm sweet Leo. But as the story progresses, Nick goes through the maturing steps of a broken heart and then eventually becomes lovers with a multimillionaire Lebanese, Wani Ouradi, who supports Nick in a world of multiple partner sexual adventures, cocaine drug orgies, and the development of an indulgent arts magazine that appeals to the ultra-sophisticated rich. Wani is played by Alex Wyndham who maintains the erotic mysterious decadent stereotype of the gay exotic.
All of this splendor begins to crumble with the rising political success of Gerald Fedden, which requires him to associate with wealthy bigots and prejudicial hate-monger ideologues that direct the policies of the conservative party. It is daughter Cat who pulls the world down around the other characters by exposing all the hypocrisy and hidden scandal that supports the privileged life that she and her family enjoy. However her desire to reveal all hypocrisy also bleeds into the life of Nick and his lover Wani, who is dying of AIDS. Wani does stretch toward honesty and authenticity as he begins to die, offering to leave Nick the building in which they manage their arts magazine.
Having sex with men while implying to the world that you are straight may protect privilege but it makes a man vulnerable. Thus when we see Gerald fall from his political perch due to financial and sexual scandals, we also see Wani fall as he deteriorates physically from the effects of HIV. Nick looks at the first edition of their magazine Ogee and the impression is that the wealthy, privilege, glamour, and luxury is at best an illusion, and more likely a diversion from authenticity.
Nick becomes the scapegoat for the scandals that plague the Fedden home, even though his gayness was surely one of the least scandals the Fedden's faced. Yet the viewer is left with the impression that the scapegoat role allows him to make an emotional break from the Feddens and maybe one day this young man's painful experiences will afford him authenticity. The film is oddly optimistic in the end since Nick may be in both pain and grief and must start his life over, but the viewer is never in doubt that the painful lessons will be integrated into this bright sensitive young man so that the final product is stronger and more self directed.
Well made, beautifully acted, clearly formatted and edited, the film is very good and is highly recommended.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Adapted by award-winning writer Andrew Davies from Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning novel, this three-part saga is set during the Thatcherite 1980s. A story of love, class, sex and money, The Line of Beauty crawls deep under the skin of Thatcher's Britain, seen through the eyes and experiences of a young, gay man, from the euphoria of falling in love to the tragedy of AIDS. Framed by the two general elections which returned Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative government to power, the series unfurls through four extraordinary years of change and tragedy.
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