Bright Young Things (2003) - 70%
A dazzling directorial debut from none other than the monolith that is Stephen Fry. Based around Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, Stephen manages to knit together a fine young cast, an appreciation of everything that the Waugh image entails, and a keen eye for aesthetic beauty. Unsurprisingly from such an admirer, and in some ways product, of the carefree but passionate idle classes of the early 20th century, there is a great sense of fondness for the central characters. As in Wilde (1997), we are encouraged to have disdain for an England very much still gripped by Victorian ideals, and to savour and adore those ideologically free from such needless repression.
The Bright Young Things in question are the upper classes, or rather the children of the repressed upper classes, living and partying from allowances and privileged livelihoods. On paper a fairly reprehensible group to some, but as is so often the way, they are depicted in all their multicolour glory. It is quite enjoyably easy to be taken along on the stream of their laxity and sense of amused abandon; and this is very much the Waugh - and, through Wodehouse and Wilde, the Stephen Fry - way.
In and amongst the younger selves of outrageously talented stars like David Tennant, James McAvoy and Michael Sheen is the stirring and underrated performance from Stephen Campbell Moore (who’s name I had to Google, such is the underratedness of this performace. Although he did apparently play the Prime Minister in the recent Johnny English Reborn film. Good for him. Thus ends parentheses); what you might call the straight man of the piece. Although very much a part of the gaiety of his peers, he also has serious ambitions to write. His manuscript is confiscated at customs at the very beginning of the film, and his luck essentially takes a nosedive from there. His plight illustrates the sober view of such a lifestyle, both in terms of their fight against establishment, and in the comedown from their own way of life.
An intelligent and enjoyable ride through times of moral uncertainty and ceaseless youth. I highly recommend.
70%
