Film

Speaking of Blowing It...

Stephen Fry Doesn't with Bright Young Things

by Annie Wagner

An adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's prescient 1930 novel Vile Bodies, Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things is an only slightly more cheerful take on the lives of dissipated London socialites between the wars. And they are terribly dissipated. Even the adorable Adam Fenwick-Symes, played by Royal Shakespeare Company regular Stephen Campbell Moore, has a heart so benumbed by hedonism that when he has the opportunity to sell off his fiancée to settle a mounting debt, he barely hesitates.

Bright Young Things is the directorial debut for Stephen Fry, an actor best known for playing the title role in Wilde. For a first film, a period adaptation packed full of paparazzi and revelers presents its share of challenges, and occasionally Fry's choices are so obtrusive that they distract from the antics of the sybarites onscreen. The camera swoops madly, entire scenes are tinted red, and the extras don't so much snort "naughty salt" as breathe through a veil of cocaine. There's also an unjustified visual echo of Citizen Kane, and a syrupy, invented ending.

But Fry is a fabulous director of actors, and he's working with some generous talent. The over-the-top doddering from character actors like Peter O'Toole and Jim Broadbent is nothing short of inspired, and Fenella Woolgar is perfect as the perilously unhinged aristocrat Agatha.

Fry also knows just how to treat Waugh's comic dialogue--the hilarity pounces out of nowhere, and it's lethal. When Stockard Channing, playing the evangelical Mrs. Melrose Ape, concludes her brilliantly loony exhortations and introduces her choir of American girl-angels, you might expect that the mirth has crested. But then the girls up the ante, launching lustily into the venerable hymn "Ain't No Flies on the Lamb of God." I think I nearly cried.

annie@thestranger.com