Undoing of a helpless romantic

Fans of Oscar Wilde will enjoy this sweet depiction of famed playwright’s final years

THE HAPPY PRINCE Grade: C+ Cast: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Emily Watson Director: Rupert Everett Duration: 1h45m

“I’m in mortal combat with this wallpaper. One of us has to go.”

These are the famous last words of Oscar Wilde — and like a lot of such quotations, it’s apocryphal. He almost certainly said something like that, but it was weeks before his death in 1900, at which time he was insensible.

Rupert Everett knows that, and he places the line in its proper historical context in his sympathetic tribute to the British writer. The Happy Prince — the movie takes its title from one of Wilde’s beloved children’s stories — has been a passion project for the actor, who stars as Wilde and also gets his first writing and directing credits here.

Rather than try to encompass all of Wilde’s busy 46

years, Everett focuses on the final three, when that wallpaper really started to rankle.

Wilde had been sentenced to two years’ hard labour for gross indecency (i.e., homosexuality) and after that he took up residence in France under the name Sebastian Melmoth.

His public had all but abandoned him, but he still had friends with money, not least Lord Alfred Douglas (Colin Morgan) and British-Canadian writer Robbie Ross (Edwin Thomas), two former lovers whom Wilde is constantly playing off each other, telling each man that only the

other ever really understood him.

Wilde’s circle also includes old friend Reggie Turner (Colin Firth), and at greater remove, his wife Constance (Emily Watson). He wanted to reconcile with her and his two sons — indeed, when he first arrives on French soil, he

seems to want to live a reformed life, as it was then understood.

But in this telling Wilde is a tragic, helpless romantic, unable to block his ears to the cries of his heart. It would ultimately be his undoing. Everett’s script is sweet but a little dry. Fans of Wilde

should enjoy the treatment, although they may yearn for more of the writer’s early witticisms.

But it’s ultimately an earnest tale. And isn’t that what’s important?

— SONY PICTURES CLASSICS Rupert Everett wrote, directed and stars in The Happy Prince, a film that revisits the final years of playwright Oscar Wilde.