Pacte avec le diable

This is a modern updating of the classic, 'Picture of Dorian Grey.' As if the Oscar Wilde story was rewritten by sex & shopping book hack, Jackie Collins. There's nothing new here except for the setting, in a photo model environment instead of Victorian London.

It starts off interesting enough but McDowell as a poor man's Devil, begins to chew the scenery before too long. And sadly, Ethan Erickson doesn't have the range of acting to successfully portray the slowly morally declining Dorian.

For a study in debauchery, there's precious little shown, you would get the idea the height of decadence was dancing in a few discos on the continent. Surprising since the video I watched had an 18 certificate.

The original film version was made under far more stringent censorship rules but still was able to imply the depths that Dorian sunk to in his pursuit of hedonistic pleasures.

This is just fodder for the MTV generation, full of flash style and hip music but lacking in any real substance at all.

Watch the original or for a study in moral corruption, check out the excellent 'Alias Nick Beal' starring Ray Milland as well.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray", the classic story written by Oscar Wilde in 1890, was adapted to the modern times in "Dorian", a quite cheesy film that brings the same story with a giant variety of changes and characterizations of events, in short a drastic summary for people who hate read books and prefers to watch images.

The story goes from the 1890's to the 2000's; Dorian (played by Ethan Erickson) isn't rich, he's a young worker that happens to be in the right place at the right moment when his beauty is noticed by Henry (Malcolm McDowell) who wants to transform the average worker into a famous top model. Instead of painted picture Dorian is immortalized into a photograph that will become ugly, scary while he'll never get old after making a pact with the devil (the notion we get is that Henry is the devil who steal cute guys souls to take). There's the forever young theme, the romance between Dorian and Sybil; tragedies, beauty vs. Ugliness vs. Intelligence and body vs. Soul, and the elements and quotations perfectly written by Wilde in his masterpiece.

But there's something rotten in this film, something that doesn't work quite right. Actually, many things. The wooden acting from the casting (but hey, 'Mr. Hans Landa' Christoph Waltz is there to give an impressive job here), the script that is pretty laughable at so many moments (the photo session with Dorian trying to do a sexy pose is one of those); and once you love the book, know how everything is so perfect and beautiful in it, you can't never achieve greatness in an update like this. A remake with period costumes, closer to what the writer wrote, like the one made in 1945, works way better than this.

"Dorian" only works when it comes to see how handsome Dorian is, I mean, the main actor who looks incredibly hot whether shirtless, showing his great body or just wearing those tight jeans, so nice to look, he's very hunky. His female co-stars are equally good, except for the one who plays Sybil Vane, which might only be attractive to the director or Dorian's eyes.

This Dorian Gray's modernization might work for the poor souls who haven't got the opportunity, or the time and patience to read one of the most dazzling and respected classic of English Literature. To me, it was just an silly entertainment, with some good laughable moments. 4/10.

Apparently, this "Dorian," a.k.a. "Pact with the Devil," was a direct-to-video movie, and it shows. To call it an MTV-styled updating of Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of the Dorian Gray" doesn't fully describe how awfully irritating it is. For some reason, once-acclaimed actor Malcolm McDowell ("A Clockwork Orange" (1971)) and future two-time-Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz ("Inglorious Basterds" (2009), "Django Unchained" (2012)) are in it. They easily outshine the wretched demonstrations of so-called "acting" by the rest of the cast of amateurs--even though McDowell mostly butchers the epigrams of Wilde's Lord Henry, and Waltz plays a billionaire cuckold invented for this movie and who is rather superfluous to the main plot. There's a lot of yelling and shoving that's supposed to be drama. Wilde's words are replaced by illiterate drivel. At the least, the movie should've been edited down to a more tolerable short rather than a feature-length picture cluttered with time-lapse photography of traffic and cityscapes as transitions between just about every scene and with a distracting and obnoxious soundtrack also transitioning between and within just about every scene. In the one where Henry discovers two girls in Dorian's apartment, his voiceover is almost inaudible because of the blaring music. Instead of trimming, however, the jarring editing features temporal replays and sequences that look like trailers (the montage of Dorian and Bae's affair and the one of the billionaire's cuckolding).

I've seen every Dorian Gray movie I could find since reading Wilde's book, and although there's not many of them available (I've seen 10, including the loose reworkings such as this one), this is easily the most ineptly assembled of the lot. It seemingly has a few novel ideas, too, but blunders them all. There's potential for some clever structuring of the narrative, especially with McDowell and Waltz' characters. Both employ a form of surveillance: Waltz with the cameras capturing his cuckolding, and McDowell sneaking photographs like a peeping Tom. McDowell's Lord Henry is also the narrator, who in the movie's framing device is relating the main story to the detective. He also relates the outline of Wilde's novel to the Dorian in this movie. Plus, he has the omniscience of the Devil. But, nothing interesting comes of any of this.

Reworking Wilde's Faustian tale of eternal youth and doppelgänger images for the modeling business seems promising, too, as it did when the 1983 TV movie "The Sins of Dorian Gray" did the same thing. That version also had a female version of Basil, the artist who painted Dorian's portrait in the book. Here, she's Bae, the photographer. In both movies, Henry manages Dorian, and both are updated to contemporary times. Worst of all, both, through their partial gender reversals, are heteronormative debasings of the gay subtext of the book. Although, at least, this one contains some debauchery; it's flabbergasting how little is even hinted at in some of the other adaptations. A photographic portrait of Dorian instead of a painted one also has an antecedent in a 1915 silent film version, which still exists.

Ordinarily, I think I'd like the use of mirrors here, too, including hiding the portrait behind one, but the movie is so poorly executed in every way, it's difficult to appreciate that there might've been some appealing concepts to begin with.

The story is familiar - recall, original novelist Oscar Wilde's "Dorian" wished his painting would grow old whilst he remain young. Like in days of old, handsome male model Ethan Erickson (as Louis) wishes for eternal youth. Then, while one of his pictures ages, he becomes the ageless "Dorian" of the title. Like his predecessors, Mr. Erickson descends into decadent debauchery. A charismatic older mentor, Malcolm McDowell (as Henry), eggs him on...

Re-titled "Pact with the Devil".

Allan A. Goldstein's updated "Dorian" alters the story in ways that become nonsensical. The main problem occurs by making Mr. McDowell's character semi-Faustian. To have McDowell in the cast, and render his character inexplicable, should be a crime. Erickson, an extremely good-looking man, is also slighted by a faltering characterization - in an early scene, he is required to pretend he couldn't imagine someone thinking he could be a pin-up boy? And, Jennifer Nitsch (as Bae) has an undeveloped, but intriguing, back-story.

**** Dorian (2001) Allan A. Goldstein ~ Ethan Erickson, Malcolm McDowell, Jennifer Nitsch, Christoph Waltz

Basically, transporting it to a modern day setting should be enough to do the trick. Christ on a stick, this was a lamentable film. It will never be the worst film ever, nor is it so badly made it sucks hairy balls. But given the fact this was based on Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", they sure turned it into an atrocity.

The easiest thing to do, was to set the story in the world of models & fashion photography (eternal youth & beauty, right?). Yawn, how original. Furthermore, this film suffers that hard from looking "so nineties", that it hurts. A lot. Ridiculous and worn-out fashion concepts, the photo-shoots are so clichéd (and you should see the result - no artistic value whatsoever), a lot of uninspired pop/rock songs for no reason on the soundtrack, lots of cheap but oh-so-hip at the time editing effects, glossy & shallow sensuality, polished soft sex scenes, art-farty 'beau monde' parties, an artificial fragrance of decadence,... Should I go on?

I've seen decadence in the world of fashion portrayed with more flair in a grotesque B-flick like "Night Angel" (1990). I've seen art, photography, evil & mirrors handled better in horror sequel romp like "Amityville: A New Generation" (1993). You think those are great movies? That should say enough about how good a job this "Dorian" did on a classic story. I've also seen great Edgar Allan Poe stories all mangled up and poured into some 'sorority girls' slasher-format in "Buried Alive" (1990), not exactly the most faithful of adaptations. But I'm sure if they'd turned this "Dorian" into a slasher, it would have been a better stupid movie.

You can tell Malcolm McDowell had some fun playing his part, as Dorian's (evil) mentor, but it's far less fun seeing him play it. The whole film pretty much bores you along, and so does McDowell after a while.

Have the Hughes Brothers make a new "Dorian Gray" movie with a Victorian London setting and give us decent adaptation. It would be for more pleasing looking forward to such a project than suffering through the umpteenth unimaginative Hollywood re-make of any given horror film these days. Or maybe I could check out that 2009 version with Colin Firth. It surely should have more appeal than this trite.