This one needed tightening and focus. It drifts aimlessly in imitation of the non-sexual affair between Carrington and Strachey, but the art form is an imitation of an action, not a replication of mere aimlessness. That the characters are inherited from history and from a book about the Bloomsbury circle does not absolve the film, a separate work, from establishing the characters and their motives. Yet here we have the Rufus Sewell character charging around madly for no established reason, other than that he can't get into Dora's knickers. And his brief reappearance almost at the end is inexplicable. Carrington's lovers come and go -- obviously surrogates for her inability to consummate anything with Strachey. But those lovers have no frame or context or reason for being taken on by Carrington other than that old ennui. Her own character, then -- in spite of wonderful Emma -- gets lost in the slow motion meaninglessness of her life. She does depict the layering of the Bohemian that took the place of the stiff corseting of the rest of the ladies of the time. The beautiful moorlands of Yorkshire are just that -- a travelogue. They are not integral as, say, the world of Tess or Eustacia in Hardy. In spite of what other posters say, direction here is a major flaw.
Review of Carrington
