June 24–July 1, 1999

movie shorts

An Ideal Husband

recommended

With a marvelous cast and a lackluster production, An Ideal Husband presents a particularly thorny see-it-or-don’t-see-it decision. Certainly anyone who loves Julianne Moore, Rupert Everett, Minnie Driver, Jeremy Northam and Cate Blanchett will delight in their taking on the barbed witticisms and concealed emotions of Oscar Wilde’s play. But Oliver Parker, who last directed the Laurence Fishburne Othello, has given Wilde’s shiny bauble a rather dull dressing-up, treating it like a run-of-the-mill period piece. It’s an ongoing mystery why filmmakers don’t outfit Wilde with a visual style to match his words. Instead, Parker leaves us to contemplate the rather dull mechanics of Wilde’s play, which is far too concerned with the rather dull matter of Northam’s ethically questionable entry into parliamentary politics, and whether or not that will sour his marriage to the morally rigid Blanchett. Freed from having to hem and haw, Moore and Everett do get a chance to light up the screen as a continental villainess and a wealthy ne’er-do-well (an obvious Wilde stand-in). With An Ideal Husband, the devil’s in the drama, and the details are pure delight.

—Sam Adams