Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

museumofdave Because this BBC mini-series is so perfectly cast, and because the sense of time and place are so vivid and the performances subtle and thoughtful, I found this adaptation of the book on a level with the book itself. In the almost three hours, it manages to depict a relatively innocent, intelligent young man as he hitches himself to an upper class political family and learns some painful lessons both about the culture and about himself; like so many young men driven by dreams of wealth and success, he feels that merely contributing a lively presence is enough, that insinuating himself within a wealthy enclave will bring him status and perhaps some sexual favors.

isabelle1955 I quite often see movies made of books I've read. Less often do I watch a film (or TV series in this case) and then read the book. But that's exactly what I did after watching The Line of Beauty on DVD. This BBC production of the superb Alan Hollinghurst novel, adapted for TV by Andrew Davies (the author of so many great adaptations for the BBC) is simply very good. It is perfectly cast and beautifully filmed. One of the best adaptations I've seen in a long time. It's very true to its source material yet at the same time can never replace reading the novel, which I strongly recommend anyone who enjoys beautiful writing, to do.The setting is 1980s London, Thatcher is in power and our hero, young Nick Guest (a perfectly cast Dan Stevens), has just gained a first at Oxford. Newly uncloseted as gay, but still a virgin, he arrives to stay at the upscale London house of college friend Toby Fedden (Oliver Coleman), the son of newly elected pompous Tory MP Gerald Fedden (Tim McInnerny, just terrific in this role.) Also in the household are Gerald's rich and rather saintly wife Rachel (Alice Krige – written forever into my heart as the Borg Queen unfortunately) and unstable, bipolar daughter Catherine, or The Cat, as she is known to the family (Hayley Atwell). Nick is ostensibly studying for a PhD in the more obtuse aspects of the writing of Henry James, but mostly his time is spent pursuing his first lover, the beautiful but prosaic Leo (Don Gilet), and his first love, beauty. Cat becomes his confidante in his pursuit of Leo, and he in turn is supposed to keep an eye on her as she veers through life on a swerving path of extremes. Nick is an aesthete, unworldly in the games of politics and money that he finds himself observing, and perhaps just a little disingenuous. He himself comes from a more humble, country town background, and is rather in love with the Feddens' life of easy wealth and beautiful possessions, into which he slots readily. This is played out against the back drop of the encroaching AIDS epidemic and Thatcher's politics. If Billy Elliot showcased one aspect of Thatcherism 'up North' in the 1980s, then this is one aspect of what was happening 'down South' in the same period. And in some ways, I guess it could be Britain's belated equivalent of Angels in America; Thatcher/Reagan politics and the onset of AIDS. Nick's affair with a beautiful but spoiled millionaire playboy, Wani Ouradi (Alex Wyndham), leads him into a cocaine fuelled life of high society parties, European travel, random sex and an esoteric, arty magazine (Ogee) and film which will never get made. Money is made and wasted with unconcern in this brave new Thatcher world. As his friends begin to get ill and die, Nick seems immune to it all, cocooned in the Fedden's beautiful home. But life begins to unravel as AIDS looms larger and larger, Cat denounces her father's extra marital affair to the press, hypocrisies are exposed and the family, of which he thought he was a part, ultimately closes ranks against Nick.I can understand that if you never lived through the 80s in Britain, this may all seem like an interesting but rather unreal and irrelevant look back at recent history. I must be 3 or 4 years older than Nick, but unfortunately – or fortunately I guess, depending on how you look at it – I spent most of the 1980s working offshore, doing my small bit to keep the North Sea oil industry afloat and profitable, so much of what happened in London passed me by, and news was heard in occasional snippets, bookended by the shipping forecasts, when we could get the ship's radio to work. Hideously expensive, hangover inducing Norwegian lager was our drug of choice. Come to think of it, most of Thatcherite economics was based on the bonanza of North Sea oil, so maybe I'm partly to blame? Anyway, I found it fascinating and terrific viewing. They captured the pomposities and hypocrisies of the era, the waste and excess so well, and the groveling of the MPs to "the Lady". It is also very funny in places. I can't recall if this is in the film as well as the book, but I am still smiling at Cat's description of a sequined Margaret Thatcher as resembling a Country and Western star. I wish I'd thought of that!

BruceUllm Perhaps I couldn't find the DVD menu selection for PLOT: ON OFF. Clearly, the default is OFF. When the end credits began to roll, I couldn't believe that was it. Like our poor, but beautiful protagonist, I felt used, dirty, cheap....The characters were drawn in very broad strokes and the writer's disdain for wealthy Thatcherites was all to apparent. I consider myself a "Roosevelt Democrat", but would appreciate a bit more subtlety.Of course, the problem could be with me. I see that many others seem to find some meaning or message in this picture. Alas, not I. The only thing that kept me from giving this a "1" was the nice scenery, human and plant.

marcelproust Okay, so it may seem unfair to review The Line of Beauty after having only seen Episode One, but the sneaky peek on show last night at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival gave every indication that this adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning novel is a classic in the making.Everyone who has read the novel will have his or her own impression of the characters and locales. (I lived in Notting Hill for more than a decade, so my mental picture of the story was probably more vivid than most.) But within minutes of the bravura opening sequence (grafted onto the novel by canny adapter Andrew Davies), director Saul Dibb makes Nick Guest's world his own.What I found so extraordinary about this adaptation (or at least the first episode) is how cleverly Davies has mined the novel for humour, social commentary and romance. On- screen representations of the upper-middle-classes tend to show us the wholly implausible world of PG Wodehouse, but without Wodehouse's wit, or stick the knife in with bitter class hatred. The Line of Beauty does neither; showing us the Fedden family warts and all. Gerald Fedden MP (in a stunningly good characterisation by Tim McInnerney) is quite the pompous paterfamilias, but is also generous, funny and kind.As our "eyes and ears" through the story, newcomer Dan Stevens is pitch-perfect; his clear, blue eyes miss nothing as his life becomes more and more entwined with the Feddens and their glittering world. The clips shown of the following two episodes promise no decline in quality, so if The Line of Beauty does not come quite as close to perfection as Brideshead Revisited - which remains the high watermark of British television drama - it is still shaping up to be landmark adaptation, and not to be missed when it premieres on BBC2 later in May.