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A movie that asks the question, how did it ever get made? Absolutely not a chance that it was made for profit. Once I stopped asking the question, I could enjoy the superior cinematic quality of all the elements that elevate a film to a work of art. I suppose it must have been exhibited in a theater, somewhere, though getting it booked must have been quite an accomplishment for its backers. I caught it on cable which allowed me to sip on a brandy while the film took its time unfolding in a style that I would describe as a splendidly animated coffee table book.

I am moved to comment on Carrington to express my gratitude to its makers.

I really appreciated the performances in Carrington. I recognized Jonathan Pryce (Tomorrow Never Dies) and Emma Thompson (Much Ado About Nothing) of course but the rest of the cast was largely unknown to me. My conservative Christian outlook has instilled in me an instinctive apprehension for homosexuals though I sympathize with the fact that it must be difficult for such individuals to live in a world that is oriented towards straight people. But that aside the story was quite moving. The devotion of Ms. Thompson's character for Carrington is quite touching despite the fact that the relationship isn't all she can hope for. I don't know how much of the film is historical fact and how much is artistic license but it was overall quite worthwhile. Recommended for mature audiences. 7/10.

"Carrington" has Christopher Hampton's great stamp on it and the fine performances of Emma Thompson (as the lead, artist Dora Carrington), and Jonathan Pryce (hilarious as Lytton Strachey). Also in the cast are Sam West, Jeremy Northam, Steven Waddington and Rufus Sewell, all entangled in some way with Carrington and all the time the love of her life is the one man she can't fully have.

Her story is a tragic one and extremely moving, with a lot of twists and turns along the way. Lots of sections are explicit while others are brilliantly understated, particular concerning Carrington and Strachey together. Light relief is provided with scenes including the conscientious objector hearing. We also get an insight into what makes Carrington tick as an artist, what inspires her and makes her grow.

My favourite scene of all though is Carrington, alone in a garden watching all the lovers in the house switching off the lights in their rooms until she sits in darkness.

Biopic of Edwardian painter Carrington and her platonic relationship with author Lytton Strachey. Set mostly in pastoral England, during the Great War and afterward. Strachey and Carrington entice and embrace various male companions, seemingly to vent their own frustrated passions. Unlike almost every "creative artist" film I have ever watched, the angst and toil not shown at all. Emma Thompson, as Dora Carrington, is quite good in this. Also, during the first half of the film, she manages the trick of resembling a twenty year old. Sense And Sensibility was released the same year; while she portrayed another twenty year old, there she looked like a matronly forty year old. Jonathan Pryce as Strachey is brilliant.

"How do you spell ‘intangible'?" Dora Carrington asks of Lytton Strachey midway through this film as she sits writing at her desk. How do you spell intangible, indeed. Carrington tells the story of people who tried, in their own way, and at a time when society did not encourage such experiments, to acknowledge openly what most of us are aware of but still reluctant to discuss: that a great many differences exist between love and desire.

Carrington is one of the great epic romances, but a romance where sexual congress between the two who are passionately in love with each other has nothing whatever to do with the deep wells of feeling they share with each ther. Like The Unbearable Lightness Of Being and Out of Africa, Carrington is a film that dares to examine the difference between desire and love, and looks at an adult subject in an adult way. As opposed to Hollywood's usual matter-of-fact insistence that love is a game with a win/lose dialectic simplistically painted in broad stokes, Carrington traces, rather, the fact that love is indeed a mystery which must be acknowledged and honored for the way that it can bring out the best in both people rather than a way of keeping emotional score.

Emma Thompson is able to bring out the awkward, self-effacing aspects of Dora Carrington all the way down to the pigeon-toed stance the way the real life Carrington apparently stood. With all the impatience of a little girl who wishes that one day she'll wake up and finally find herself to be a sophisticated woman, she worships Lytton for his "cold and wise" attitude, his ability to see straight through the conventions of the time, and adopts him as her emotional mentor.

She's an artist whom everyone in the Bloomsbury set knew, even though she never really considered herself a part of the circle, unlike Lytton, whom everyone swarmed around for his scorched earth policy of anti-Victorian insights and rapier wit. Carrington, it would appear, spent her whole life trying to figure herself out, like any true artist, and Thompson very ably transmits that lost quality throughout the film: even as she gains her confidence socially, sexually and artistically, the motivations of her heart she would never let be pressured, no matter how much physical affection and attention she needed. Which I think is an important distinction to make.

A virgin many years past the point of reason, it is as if Carrington bought in to the sexual revolution of the flapper era between the world wars and the way it tried to repeal the oppressiveness of Victorian morals, learning how to cultivate and appreciate the sensual needs of the body, but deep down realized that a healthy, vigorous sex life with a plethora of partners does not necessarily mean more love, but simply more sex. As Carrington points out in the film, with Lytton she was able to be herself in all her confusion and joy, and without the obligatory pressures of regular sexual performance was able to find in Lytton the only person she ever really felt emotionally comfortable with. Echoing that great line of TS Eliot's in Four Quartets, of a "love beyond desire."

Jonathan Pryce, as Lytton Strachey, has the honor of portraying one of the best screen roles of all-time. Like Rex Harrison's Henry Higgins, or Liza Minnelli's Sally Bowles, his performance as Lytton is so fully realized that his character becomes unprecedented. Incorporating the attitude of, say, a bearded Oscar Wilde, Pryce's Lytton takes no prisoners and is disgusted by what he sees around him: the behaviour of the upper classes he finds himself eventually skirting is embarrassingly inexcusable to his ethically conscientious grounding. English boys are dying, he scowls, for their right to shamelessly frolic on the lawns of garden parties.

When Lytton moves in with Carrington they both want commitment (with a small c), but also personal freedom. This ambiguity toward each other is parallel to their ambiguity toward the concept of fame, which they both courted in a very teasing way, but soon grew to realize that there is a lot more to be said for secure domesticity (no matter how loosely defined) than their behaviorally adventurous artistic peers. Because Carrington is intelligently written, directed, and acted, however, we do not see the behavior of each of them as simply willful and spoiled, but as part of the contradictions they need to stay individuals in a culture, and at a time, where the conventional notions of love and sex were strictly regimented.

Jonathan Pryce plays Lytton with a sort of detachment that is supposed to come from the character's distaste for commitment.

What's most surprising about this epic romance is that given the amount of territory it traverses (seventeen years) at an almost leisurely pace, it clocks in at only a hair over two hours, but when those two hours are over, you certainly feel as if you've been somewhere, seen something, been privy to so many more truths and realizations than you'll see in any other standard film about a romance. What we have here is a paradox: an old-fashioned story about an avant-garde arrangement. An intelligent, thoughtful love story, told with enough care and attention that we really get involved in the passions between the characters, not the algebra surrounding them.

The superficial story is intriguing only if we are able know what the characters are thinking. Unfortunately, the basic plot line isn't expanded upon to create depth and interest. Some of the scenes are far too short - an intentional effect, I'm sure, but at the expense of the story. Things happen and we never understand why, and we are never made to care why either.

I usually don't mind the kind of movie that this one tries to be - a character study with dubious and sometimes incomprehensible motivations. But this movie never made the story compelling enough to justify its own vagueness.

This is possibly the best character study made in their last ten years. Taken from a biography of Lytton. This tells an emotionally complete tale of Dora Carrington and her love for Lytton. There is great drama here right from the start. Lytton is a homosexual writer who fancys young men. Dora is a painter who does not want to sleep with her "friend", because she believes its just for the physical (Which the film later shows to be true). Initially Dora is put off by Lytton (as is the viewer) but later as she says to him, She is burdened by one of the most self abasing loves for him. He also in turn loves her. But as he states they can do nothing about sleeping together. This is the contrast which is kept up throughout the whole film. All of Carringtons lovers physically love her body, and one of them even loves her (in a selfish way). But Lytton and Carrington love each other without sex, and their love is the strongest. As with the best Drama's, the character development never stops the whole way through. Each character is so well drawn and acted (Special credit must go to Emma Thompson and Jonathon Pryce, although the rest of the cast is also good) that you know how they are feeling even when it is not directly said or implemented. there is spoken and unspoken conflict in every scene. The two main characters are already in conflict while being in love. She loves him and he loves her but he is only attracted by men. Great drama manages to have conflict in every scene, and this one does. Great music from Micheal Nyman manages to capture the sentiments of this film especially well. So many more things could be said about the excellent narrative structure and lovely cinematography. But to be safe I will simply keep with my opening line. See Carrington. It does not pander to the audiences or ever become exploitational. It is a rare movie where the climax to the film is so fitting that you really can feel the emotion involved in these final frames. This is a film not to be missed.

Dame Emma Thompson played Dora Carrington, a woman in a man's world. She is based on a real person who lived. Whether it's accurate, I don't know. Dora prefers being called Carrington rather than Dora. She is taken with homosexual writer Lytton Strachey played by Sir Jonathan Pryce. They're an odd pairing. Despite the obstacles, they seemed to be drawn together over their long term relationship. They both love each other despite society's expectations. Strachey comes into young Dora's life. They both have lovers of their own and even a husband too. Lytton and Carrington seem to belong together despite what we expect them too. The film does move slow at times though. It has a sterling supportive cast.

This film is really about Lytton Strachey. His actions, thoughts and how he is the center of Carrington's life. The wrong target as biography is the least of this film's problems.

It's a manipulative fraud in the depiction of Carrington as doting, caring, and, at the film's end, a tragic sort of lover. She was far from that as just two pages reveals in Leon Edel's book, "Bloomsbury A House of Lions" where he analyzes the Carrington/Strachey relationship using the same material that was the basis for this film.

To say she was a confused and emotionally odd collection of forces is an understatement. There was a controlling and deceptive quality to Carrington's personality that made her very unpleasant. That is not the sort of character who is nice for a movie but the truth of it is that Carrington was not nice and this film continues to present her in a way that is not honest.

Unfortunately mainstream movies cannot show the horrible faults of those that it elevates to biography status.

The film as a production is very good and Jonathan Pryce as Strachey holds the work together. Carrington is an enigma because all the bad parts of her real self are removed.

When love comes, it doesn't always come in a form that allows its fullfillment, as Dora Carrington knows. Her lifelong love of Lytton, a man for whom romantic love only knows a male face, is both a source of great anguish and great joy. Emma Thompson portrays Dora with great sensitivity, depicting her other loves and lovers as genuine yet never enough to supplant her love of Lytton. In our society the love of "one and only" can be an oppressive ideal that few can attain, and Hollywood is its loudest proponent. This movie allows for a well thought out exploration on of the many other faces of true love. Superb acting, direction, editing, costuming, the works. I highly recommend it.

A half hour trimming would help this movie, which is generally interesting but tends to drag, especially towards the end when I began to actively wish it would just finally end already. I liked most of it, the characters are interesting and their odd interconnected relationships are rather amusing, but I was really rather disappointed by the time it was all over. Probably worth watching, overall.

This one needed tightening and focus. It drifts aimlessly in imitation of the non-sexual affair between Carrington and Strachey, but the art form is an imitation of an action, not a replication of mere aimlessness. That the characters are inherited from history and from a book about the Bloomsbury circle does not absolve the film, a separate work, from establishing the characters and their motives. Yet here we have the Rufus Sewell character charging around madly for no established reason, other than that he can't get into Dora's knickers. And his brief reappearance almost at the end is inexplicable. Carrington's lovers come and go -- obviously surrogates for her inability to consummate anything with Strachey. But those lovers have no frame or context or reason for being taken on by Carrington other than that old ennui. Her own character, then -- in spite of wonderful Emma -- gets lost in the slow motion meaninglessness of her life. She does depict the layering of the Bohemian that took the place of the stiff corseting of the rest of the ladies of the time. The beautiful moorlands of Yorkshire are just that -- a travelogue. They are not integral as, say, the world of Tess or Eustacia in Hardy. In spite of what other posters say, direction here is a major flaw.

If you require the overdone loudness, violence and aggressivity of an American film (Training Day comes to mind), you'll need to take an extra dose of Ritalin to get through this film. (That advice could have been useful to a few of the previous reviewers, in fact.)

For those who don't have to be hit over the head, though, this film is a riveting masterpiece about the varied forms human love can assume--and a reminder that subcultures, like the Bloomsbury Group, have always given social norms a wide berth. British society has long tolerated eccentricity, especially when discreetly indulged, of which the nuanced contours of relationships among the literate in early-20th-century Britain provide an excellent illustration. Combine this refreshing glimpse of consensual mores with outstanding interpretations by Thompson and Pryce, and with fidelity to historical fact, and you've got two delightful hours of first-rate cinema on your hands.

And not an exploding car or a vengeance-driven, gadget-laden military operation against a demonized third-world country anywhere to be found. Amazing. And bravo. 9 out of 10.

A story about a collection of early 20th century sluts, perverts, deviants, and assorted libertines. And I thought such behavior (or at least the public airing of it) was a more modern phenomenon. I had never heard of Dora Carrington or Lytton Strachey, and actually, I thought the movie wasn't bad. Emma Thompson is always magnificent, and although this wasn't her best work, she is always worth watching. Jonathan Pryce was only marginally believable in the beard, but at least he wasn't hawking unseen cars. This film is worth seeing if it comes on cable, but I wouldn't recommend spending any money. Grade: C

Emma Thompson in a period piece--I would bet that's a pretty good movie, and 'Carrington' did not disappoint me. It concerns the unusual relationship of writer Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce) and painter Dora Carrington (Thompson) in their insular world of upper-class friends and other artists in England between the Great Wars. When we first meet Strachey he's a fastidious homosexual of thirty-six going on seventy-six. He mistakes Carrington, with her bobbed hair and masculine clothes, for a boy. Despite this inauspicious beginning, they soon find themselves fascinated with each other, then the fascination turns to love. Their non-sexual relationship endures in spite of her marriage, their other lovers and their lover's lovers. As the years go by, a flow chart might help out the viewer trying to remember who's who.

As you might surmise, this film is not for everyone. There are some who will dismiss the whole group as "immoral" or as an effete corps of impudent snobs, but we won't be that narrow- minded and judgemental, will we? If you allow yourself into 'Carrington's' world I think you'll find it rewarding. It's full of good actors but I believe its success is largely due to director Christopher Hampton's screenplay. It's a full two hour movie without the benefit of car chases, explosions or kickboxing matches, so it's a big plus to have something nice to look at for all that time. We can thank cinematographer Denis Lenoir and production designer Caroline Ames for that.

One thing regarding Christopher Hampton's film "Carrington" that bears noting for potential viewers is that previous knowledge is helpful. If you don't have any sort of idea who Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey are, or the avant-garde world in which they moved, then the movie will seem very obscure and disjointed.

Regarding the movie, it is odd and melancholic, but richly intelligent and rewarding, particularly with repeated viewings.The cinematography is attractive without being showy. Michael Nyman's score is haunting and uniquely beautiful.And the casting is perfect, particularly Jonathan Pryce as the ironic Bloomsbury butterfly Strachey, and Emma Thompson as the strangely alluring Carrington, who's heart beats fiercely with love for him, despite the fact that neither of them will ever be able to do anything about it.

My personal favorite scene is when they are sitting under the tree, and Carrington tells Lytton how she feels, and he understands.They are both so peaceful and content.

This is a film for emos--middle-aged, malelike emos, with their brains stuffed full of cotton like a Quay brothers puppet. 'tis ever so dainty and genteel, to be sure; ever trembling at the verge; but the verge is one of farce, not tragedy.

The subjects are a pair of silly-ass Edwardians--one of them Lytton Strachey--who couldn't...I mean to say, they couldn't possibly...could they?...but they do. At one point the woman sets about cutting off the man's big, bushy, Edward Lear beard, just to serve him right, but as the first snicker is about to be sneed, her hand is stayed by the onset of adoration. As they lounging in a meadow together, she confides that she would jolly well like him to kiss her, whereupon he, much struck by the novelty of the idea, exclaims, "D'ye know, I think I should like to!"

The material cries out for an Alan Ayckbourn to exploit its absurdity, but here is instead is treated with the greatest doe-eyed tremulousness, eggshell-walking, and tea-party delicacy. It's like a trail left by an animal with the minutest frame of reference possible.

That animal is probably a snail. Scene after scene inches its way along to a tiny little line of dialogue, of the d'ye-know-I-have-a-notion variety, which promises to set the drama going. Then the scene fades out and that's it, that little line was all it was building to: nothing comes of nothing. Ms. Thompson whines and mopes her way through her part in her patented way, which has much in common with Monty Python's invisible man. Seldom does the film, in its great daintiness, allow her or Mr. Pryce or anyone else to suggest any genuine interaction that was ever had between any genuine people.

Except for the actors, I can't imagine any reason why anyone would want to go to see this. My reason was that I was catching up on the film work of Penelope Wilton, who plays Strachey's mother. Allowed half a chance, she and the character could have given the film a good boot in the arse, which it deserved, and would have profited by; but all they had a chance for was a little pinch on the arm. More than that would have disturbed the doilies.

I advise you read about those people instead of watching this mess ..everything is wrong from the casting to the acting.. that they seem more like.caricatures repeating lifeless dialogue that is taken from letters and not real conversations .. I didnt see any dora carrington in this film or any of her very complex relationships...

Viewer, do not believe others when they say this is a Merchant and Ivory knockoff. It has many of the same elements, to be sure, but M-I serves up confections, and here is something more interesting.

Imagine an intelligent screenwriter's first choice: whose story is this and what form must the telling take as a result? This is Carrington's story. She was an introspective painter who never exhibited -- thus we have a meditative, rather longish development. But you'll note that this is not just to revel in any lushness. What's done here is that each scene is a sequence of many small shots, each exquisitely framed, but shown less long than one can absorb. This is how Carrington would see the narrative, and it is a rather clever approach to centering it in her eye, if you can center down and read the pictures.

You also see her bias in many of the decisions related to the mechanics of the plot: her appearance changes little in 17 years; her affairs are always seen, but those of Lytton are not; and we are denied fascinating details (her father's death, the famous gatherings of the intelligently eccentric Bloomsbury Group) that she would have considered unimportant.

As the presentation is visual, Emma Thompson must dramatize physically, and so she does. Some of her character's most awkward moments have Emma in almost caricatured postures, much as one imagines one's self in retrospect as clumsy.

The test of a film is whether it transports you to an unfamiliar place and embeds a strange experience that sticks. The emotional and sexual situation here is bizarre and unfamiliar, but if you just take it as a pretty, competent film with a story, it won't work. If you take is as a film about her world, from her world, there's an additional rewarding dimension.

But go relaxed. The theme here is the existential angst between the fact you can passionately love someone and know that you will NEVER be able to provide some key factor they need, something basic in their life. An unsettling reminder.

The same day I watched this, I watched Prick Up Your Ears right before it. Not only are they both period biopics set in England, but they have a profound chronicle of love in common. Having watched both movies consecutively, it brings me to meditate on the lives and perspectives of creative people. There is a refreshing, Rilke-esquire way of thinking that they follow in their lives. What if everyone followed their heart, and nothing but?

Carrington is a buried treasure that depicts the relationship between painter Dora Carrington and author Lytton Strachey in WWI England, a beautiful existence of cottages and countryside. Even if platonic because of Strachey's homosexuality, the relationship was all the same a profound and complex one. When Carrington did form a more physically intimate relationship with a soldier, Strachey made do accepting him as a friend, while the soldier stayed rather edgy, not so much with Strachey's sexual orientation as with the reality that he was a conscientious objector. Yes, there is inescapable trouble linked to the bond between Carrington and Strachey. Yes, there is more pain and guilt than there are good times. But what if they had buckled to social expectations, convention, tradition? What if they didn't follow their hearts? By the end of the film, one realizes that the true heartbreak is caused by how much they wound up guarding their feelings in spite of following them, and in spite of the nature of their incompatible sexualities.

You could never find a better fit to play Dora Carrington. Emma Thompson is perfectly cast, wise and set aside and completely natural. She is natural in the way she looks and natural in the way she carries herself. When we first see her, when Strachey is first introduced to her, we misinterpret the first impression of her, a quiet, reticent tomboy. Carrington, like Thompson, is beautiful but maintains selfhood over everything else. Thompson understands that that is why Carrington refuses her body to her lover early in the film. She never quite seems to grow comfortable with sex no matter her progression in that inevitable field of her life. She in some sense is like a child in spite of her intellectual prowess and her disregard for recognition of her work as a painter. Her impatience for complicated situations causes her to ride roughshod over the feelings of those to whom she finds herself to be closest, and when she finds that in her penchant for the immediate, she learns the harsh truth that she has not been embracing her greatest moments.

Her primordial flaws come at the expense of Strachey, played by Jonathan Pryce, who seems to love the breezy theatricality of the role, a clear eccentric from his first moment, who gives the impression of being completely aloof and prissily high-maintenance. He seems not to take anything seriously, even his unwavering position as neutral in the issue of the war. He is one of those odd and nonchalantly insubordinate older men that make spectators laugh, but part of him quietly enjoys being a source of entertainment. Part of him is terribly troubled by his only minimal success as a writer. Somewhat like Carrington, he still seeks sometime companions more conducive to his most rudimentary needs, and in one instance, we see him laid bare, very unlike his cold and elitist temperament. In this moment, he and Carrington realize that no matter how often they fluctuate on each other's terms, they are each other's shoulders to cry on, and as they have felt as awkward as they've ever let themselves become around anyone else, they feel, whether consciously or not, that they can be completely themselves in each other's company.

Their leisurely lifestyle becomes intensely infectious, as is the atmosphere, which is not only wonderful because of the English countryside but because there is an indescribable feel to the contrast of the cinematography, which is not grainy nor is it clear and bright. Maybe it pertains to the same disregard for orthodoxy as Carrington and Strachey. Maybe it is that it doesn't conform to the expectation that historical England be depicted with lushness, nor does it conform to the precondition that a story full of sorrow be depicted with gloom.

Michael Nyman's moving and wonderful music score has a similar effect as Howard Shore's music in a David Cronenberg film, a suitably blending pulse of the hearts and lives of the story yet haunting and emotional. Had the film gone without Nyman's music, it might not have had the moving power behind its unaffectedly real and wise, not to mention true, story, and we might not have loved its two central characters. And maybe we love them for similar reasons why they love each other.

It is difficult for the average person to appreciate what is going on in this film. Nora Carrington, a painter, loved Lytton Stachey, the famous essayist, with complete devotion. But, because of his homosexuality, he could return only a spiritual love. Though he wanted to marry her, he never did, apparently to leave her free to find a normal life with another man. And while she did marry, her love for Stachey overrided any affection she had for her husband or any of her other lovers.

It must be very difficult for most people to understand the love relationship between these two people. Only those who have encountered or experienced a similar love could understand it.

I found this film very rewarding. My main criticism is the choppy editing which abruptly flits from one scene or even one location to the next. The acting of Emma Thomson and Jonathan Pryce is quite good. Pryce's role particularly is a departure from his usual work. I had trouble recognizing him because of the makeup.

The film has tweaked my interest in pursuing more of this real-life story.

The true story (it says here) of painter Dora Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey (portrayed by Emma Thompson and Jonathan Pryce). They fall in love, but Mr. Strachey is a homosexual. Then, the originally frigid, tomboyish Ms. Carrington is bedded by a series of amorous hunks; but, she really loves Strachey. Christopher Hampton's "Carrington" is slow-moving, posed, and one-sided. The latter description refers specifically, to a discriminating focus on the distaff side of the sexuality; it's painfully obvious that the explicitness is gender-biased.

The film's subject matter is welcome; it's execution is less so.

Ms. Thompson is good, albeit unusually cast; distractingly, her appearance changes little during the story's decades. Thompson is voluptuous in her nude scenes. Perpetually bearded Mr. Pryce is more (intellectually) interesting, as her platonic co-habitué. Pryce matter-of-factly offers the better characterization. Of the strong supporting performers, Samuel West (as Gerald Brenan) is exemplary. Much of the film is visually beautiful; perhaps, its greatest strength is Denis Lenoir's photography.

***** Carrington (1995) Christopher Hampton ~ Emma Thompson, Jonathan Pryce, Samuel West