Directed by Rupert Everett. Reviewed by Paul Sorrell

During the summer holidays, a friend told me that his elderly mother had gone to see this film expecting that it would be based on Oscar Wilde’s story of the same name, a rather sentimental piece that was frequently broadcast on National Radio’s Sunday morning children’s hour during the 1960s.

As in Wilde’s fable — which does find a place in the movie — an air of sorrow pervades this film, which deals with the writer’s exile in France in the late 1890s following his imprisonment in England for homosexual acts. Wilde’s decline into a world of seedy bars and music halls, absinthe, cocaine and rent boys is laid out before us, with flashbacks to his earlier life offering glimpses of the once celebrated playwright and doting father.

In Dieppe, he is initially supported by friends Reggie Turner (Colin Firth) and his literary executor, Robbie Ross, who is also a former lover. While at one level Wilde (Rupert Everett) seeks a new start, he comes adrift after linking up with another old flame, Lord Alfred ("Bosie") Douglas, who is portrayed as louche but cold-hearted, before the pair pass a debauched interlude in Naples.

We learn much about Wilde from the diverse cast that drifts around him. The hedonistic Bosie is set against the loyal Robbie, and there are several scenes in which his troubled wife Constance, mother of his two young boys, is seen struggling with the prospect of reconciliation with a man who has flouted not only the conventions of marriage, but the mores of polite society.

Throughout The Happy Prince, Wilde looms as a tragic figure, whose brittle wit and gaiety is finally overwhelmed by the unresolved conflicts and compulsions that beset him. “I am my own Judas,” he proclaims, and he several times draws comparisons between himself and the suffering Christ. However, in Wilde’s case, resurrection seems a distant prospect, despite his admission in a moment of clarity that love can redeem the greatest suffering. The humiliation he endures from a hostile crowd at Clapham Junction, en route to Reading Gaol, is the nadir of his own personal Passion.

John Conroy’s cinematography deserves special mention. The film is shot in a glowing chiaroscuro, adding a painterly beauty to every scene, but also suggesting the fading, twilight atmosphere in which Wilde spends his declining months.

While Everett’s portrayal of the unravelling of a once great creative spirit is no fairy tale, it explores complex issues of sexuality, personal freedom and responsibility and the part that each of us plays in making our lives what they are. 

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 234 February 2019: 29