“There’s no mystery so great as suffering”, says Oscar Wilde (Rupert Everett in career-best form) in a bedside story to his darling sons from which the film takes its name. And he should know.

Two years “hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed” for the crime of “gross indecency” aka “the love that dare not speak its name” (he along with 50,000 other homosexual and bisexual men were eventually pardoned in 2017).

Public abuse and humiliation which forced him to change his name and flee to Europe, far from the madding crowd in England which he described as “the natural habitat of the hypocrite”. Though not far enough to avoid being chased through the streets of France by a pack of juvenile toffs.

Followed by the triple whammy of penury, depression and meningitis which left him bedridden but not broken as suggested by his dying quip: “I’m in mortal combat with this wallpaper, Robbie. One of us has to go.”

Suffering indeed. But as the rest of the quote goes, “suffering is nothing when there is love: love is everything.” And it was his deep love for Lord Alfred Douglas nicknamed Bosie (Colin Morgan) and the undying love shown to him by Robbie Ross (Edwin Thomas), whose advances he teased with but dismissed on the grounds that he was not as “grand” or “rough” as the former, which were the rocks he clung to during his descent from happy prince to sad pauper.

A spectacular fall from grace which was softened, somewhat, from the support of his loyal friend Reggie Turner (Colin Firth as solid as ever), a daily dose of absinthe and cocaine, and “purple moments” with a string of attractive young men and rent boys including the orphaned street seller Jean (Benjamin Voisin) and hunky waiter Felice (Antonio Spagnuolo).

Written and directed by Everett, whose ten-year labour of love was recently chronicled in the fascinating BBC documentary “Rupert Everett: Born To Be Wilde”, is, like his performance, terrific.

The writing is beautiful, intelligent and witty, weaving Wilde’s epigrams and philosophical musings seamlessly into the wordy but never wavering plot which shifts back and forth from his final years in Europe to the breakdown of his relationship with his estranged wife Constance (Emily Watson) and his infamous court case which was triggered by a throwaway scribble on the back of a calling card by Bosie’s father the Marquess of Queensberry: “For Oscar Wilde, posing sodomite”.

The cinematography by John Conroy, like Wilde’s existence, is often dark and depressive, grubby and gloomy; his weary face emerging from the shadows like the bloated Brando in Apocalypse Now. In stark contrast to his sun-drenched heart-to-hearts with Bosie and colourful cavorting with scantily clad men as they engage in a saucy game of strip musical chairs.

And, similarly, the score by Gabriel Yared (who won an Oscar for The English Patient and was twice nominated for The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain) underlines rather than overplays the action which paints a warts and all picture of one of the greatest wits and gay icons of all time who though in his final years found himself “in the gutter”, through his love for Bosie and love from Robbie was forever “looking at the stars”.

Director: Rupert Everett

Writer: Rupert Everett

Stars: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Emily Watson

Peter Callaghan
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