THE HAPPY PRINCE

Director: Rupert Everett

105, R

Screenwriter: Rupert Everett

Cast: Rupert Everett, Colin Morgan, Edwin Thomas, Colin Firth, Emily Watson, Mateo Salamone, and Tom Wilkinson.

 

Rupert Everett (Shakespeare In Love, An Ideal Husband) is never less than entertaining in the role he was born to play: the Irish literary giant, Oscar Wilde. His film, however, is not set during Wilde’s triumphs on the London stage, his notorious trial, or his prison time after the putative 1895 conviction for “gross indecency with men.” Everett shows us Wilde in his last penniless years, reunited (if not very happily) with his unreliable, aristocratic lover Bosie (Colin Morgan), and living in his memories of happier times. The title refers to Wilde’s children’s story, that he recounts to Parisian street kids, about a statue who learns that suffering is the greatest mystery. An Out Film Ct Queer Thursdays presentation.

“a deeply felt, tremendously acted tribute to courage.” Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian.