the_lady_lily | Filmography

The Line of Beauty

On returning from England, G bought with him the DVD of this BBC adaptation of the Alan Hollinghurst novel. The fact it was on television had somehow got to me via the grapevine, but I can't remember whether anyone thought it was any good. So we spent the weekend before last watching the first two episodes, and today watched the final one.

First of all, I haven't read the book but G has. There are a number of places where it's quite clear a written narrative would have had a bit more flexibility and nuance to it than the television version has space for - after all, it's only three hours. The story arc also means that the three episodes fit clearly into three distinct moods - the last hour is essentially the sound of everything crashing down, and some of it is rather more unexpected than G leads me to believe the book lets it be.

Plot revolves around a chap called Nick Guest, a gay Oxford graduate, who ends up moving in with his friend and long-time crush Toby's family, whose father Gerald Fedden is MP for Nick's home constituency, dragged in as a baby-sitter to his suicidal sister Katherine. He gets comfortable there, continues as a lodger, gets a job with a chap called Wadi who is the son of a wealthy Asian entrepeneur and happens to be gay but in a 'don't let this get public' kind of way. He dances with Margaret Thatcher whilst high on cocaine. However, it all goes downhill - Gerald gets caught up in scandal for insider dealing and an affair with his secretary, and Nick's homosexuality gets drawn into the mix of scandal as Wadi is revealed as having AIDS. Nick finally leaves the home, and drives off into nowhere and uncertainty. End series, end book.

The problem with the arc is that the weight is placed very heavily on the final episode for doom, gloom and general badness. The key of the book is that Nick is deluding himself into thinking that the Fedden family are as dependent on him as he on they - he's so in love with the life that he doesn't see how dispensible he is. The television series doesn't really drop enough hints to make it clear this is the case until it all collapses around his ears in the last episode, when everyone goes 'oh, for heaven's sake, can't you see that you're deluded?' It makes the last episode unbelievably depressing and down-ing, particularly when Nick's first lover dies of AIDS and we see just how much Nick still misses him. But that would be my only criticism, and that's an issue of the medium.

The acting is very good, the scenery is good, the filming is good, the plot is good. The only problem is this somewhat weighted three-episode structure, which left me feeling quite sad at the end of it. However, it catches that feeling of 1980s London, all champagne and Charlie, really rather well. Four stars, and worth catching.