The Happy Prince

“Who knew that Rupert Everett had it in him?” said Kevin Maher in The Times. Since his early successes as an actor in the 1980s, he has seemed ever “on the brink of oblivion”. Yet with this tender portrayal of the last years of Oscar Wilde, he emerges as a talented film director. Following his conviction for gross indecency, the disgraced poet and playwright – played by Everett, who also wrote the script – wanders around Europe, lost in reminiscences of his affair with the handsome, narcissistic Lord Alfred Douglas (Colin Morgan). With a terrific supporting cast that includes Emily Watson as the poet’s longsuffering wife, this “passion project” does full justice to its subject, said  Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. It presents us with a “sad, complex, brilliant” man. Everett’s connection to the character certainly “feels genuine”, said Simran Hans in The Observer. However, his directorial style is rather “showy” and “distracting”. One of Wilde’s critics carps that, “Underneath the prose, there is no substance.” Something similar, I’m afraid, could be said about this film.