Defying classification, the 1995 film Carrington , out of print for years and just released on Blu-ray by Olive Films, seems more fashionable today than it did when first shown, or during the 1915-32 period it covers, due to its depiction of radical sexual lifestyles now more socially acceptable. The movie purports to be a biography of the bohemian Dora Carrington (1893-1932), a virtually unknown painter whose surrealistic landscapes were not appreciated until decades after her death. The film is based on Michael Holroyd's biography of Lytton Strachey, the gay writer and aesthetic literary critic who produced two masterworks, Eminent Victorians and a mythbreaking recounting of the life of Queen Victoria (popular now due to the PBS miniseries). The former book was a satire and debunking of Victorian customs and ethics, which fit into his Bloomsbury (of Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster fame) ethos, rejecting bourgeois social conventions of the day, especially sexuality. Strachey is the commanding presence in Carrington, with poor Dora reduced to a supporting role in her own movie, reflecting the same role she played in life.
Carrington (Emma Thompson), who hates her first name, was first introduced to Strachey (Jonathan Pryce) at a tea party given by Vanessa Bell (Woolf's sister). Strachey spots her cropped pageboy hairstyle and androgynous look while playing soccer and asks, "Who is that ravishing boy?" They are awkwardly introduced, and while taking a hike in the countryside he attempts to kiss her, which she spurns. Later that evening she sneaks into his bedroom and attempts to cut off his long, spongy beard, but stops, staring into his sleeping face, falling in love with him. Strachey is brought before a conscientious objector board to defend his pacifism during WWI. In a hilarious scene, he enters the tribunal and puts a rubber donut on the chair, announcing, "I am a martyr to the piles." He is declared medically unfit for any military service.
Meanwhile, Carrington had been dating fellow art student Mark Gertler (Rufus Sewell), who wanted to have sex with the 23-year-old virgin, but she refused. Desperately horny, he turns to the presumably safe Strachey for help, which only winds up driving him closer to Carrington. She rejects Gertler, who cannot understand why she is obsessed with this "disgusting pervert," to which she amusingly replies, "You always have to put up with something."
Strachey invites her to live together in a nebulous limbo relationship in-between platonic and sexual love. They find Marsh House, which she refurbishes with her stunning artistic and decorative design. She takes on other lovers (after having been finally successfully deflowered by Gertler before their split), many of whom she shares with Strachey. She meets the handsome soldier Rex Partridge (Steve Waddington), renamed Ralph by Strachey, and marries him to keep the menage a trois intact.
Strachey's success with Eminent Victorians leads to him buying Ham Sprays, a luxurious country estate in Berkshire, which he shares with Carrington, Partridge, and their partners as a commune. The mostly hetero Partridge has his London mistresses, and to act as a distraction away from Strachey, he introduces him to his best friend poet Gerald Brenan (Samuel West). But Brenan falls in love with the irresistible Carrington, and they begin an affair. He wants her to go with him to Spain, but she disdains commitment except to Strachey, the one man who cannot give her what she needs, leading to quiet torment, mental instability, and other male lovers.
Strachey falls in love with Roger, a young Oxford student. One almost needs a flow chart to keep track of the erotic entanglements. The most striking scene in the film is Carrington at night outside on the lawn at Ham Sprays observing through the brightly lit windows her past paramours romantically intertwining with their new flames. She remains the lonely outsider.
Pryce runs away with the picture with his riveting portrayal of the effete Strachey. Written and directed (in his debut) by Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons), the dialogue is witty and vicious ("I once proposed to Virginia Woolf, and she said yes. It was ghastly"). The repartee is more fun than the sex ("Ah, semen. What is it about that ridiculous white secretion that pulls down the corners of an Englishman's mouth?"). But homosexuality is given short shrift, treated almost as an exotic sideshow. We see a fully-clothed Strachey kissing Ralph while Carrington is naked, kama sutra-like, with her male lovers. Carrington's relationships with women are ignored.
The movie is divided into six parts, each covering a range of time over a 17-year span, yet it all seems disjointed, as these small scenes appear knitted together with little connecting material. Sturm und Drang is conveyed by small gestures and silences devoid of any emotional punch, even when events turn tragic towards the conclusion. Yes, this was a cerebral artistic enterprise, but little passion is exhibited except for the lush cinematography, reminiscent of a naughty Merchant-Ivory production.
What are we to make of Carrington as a feminist? She was happy to provide stability so Strachey could finish his work, pointing to an eraser with the imprinted phrase "Use Me," saying that is all she needed. She rewrote rules for her sexuality but not for the rest of her life. Her paintings were only for her and Strachey, she declined any invitations to exhibit her work publicly. She's hardly a precursor of Gloria Steinem. Today we might ask, Was Carrington transgender ("I wish I had been born as a boy")?
Thompson has never been better, but her great performance was overshadowed in the same year by her acting in the popular and more satisfying Jane Austen movie Sense and Sensibility . Carrington functions better as a cultural artifact than as entertainment. The real unvarnished Dora Carrington and a less detached life deserve another screen version. Until then, this movie will have to act as the bland appetizer before the hopefully tastier main entree.