La ligne de beauté

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.

I watched the first episode of the line of beauty last Wednesday (17th May) and I personally enjoyed it. I, myself am only 22 years old and so I was born in the eighties but obviously don't remember it. The story follows one man through his sexual awakening in amidst all the fake glamour of the 80's Tory government. The political side of it is interesting to watch, but the main focus was watching Dan Stevens character (Nick Guest) meeting other men. I have not seen Dan Stevens before in anything else, but from now on I will be on the look out for anything else he appears in. His crystal clear blue eyes, and the way he plays the character's naiveté (in the first episode anyway) is well done. I will definitely watch the next two episodes and may even read the book if I can get hold of it. I recommend tuning in, (espically if your gay) for the sex scenes alone but also for the clever portrayal of the Thatcherite years and how it both destroyed and made the country we are all living in today.

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.

Alan Hollinghurst's 'The Line of Beauty' is, at least in this adaptation, a version of 'The Great Gatsby' fitted to 1980s Britain, the story of a young man from an ordinary background who mistakenly harbours too many illusions about the beautiful people of the smart set. The story lacks the utter poignancy of Fitzgerald's book because the hero (who, co-incidentally or not, shares the name of Nick with the other novel's protagonist) only rejects his adopted world when it rejects him; But the screenplay, cinematography, and performances are all first rate, especially that of Tim McInerny, playing a MP whose ultimate ruthlessness, self-righteousness, and rottenness, is hidden beneath a layer of almost genuine charm and kindness. The political overtones of the story are somewhat lost in a treatment that dwells almost exclusively inside the gilded balloon, and all of the characters could be handled less sympathetically with some justification, but the indulgent early mood reaps final reward when things go sour. Screenwriter Andrew Davies made his name with the contemporary series 'A Very Peculiar Practice', but these days seems to concentrate largely on period drama. This aberration proves itself welcome, and leaves one hopeful of more to come.

"The Line of Beauty," which I recently saw on Logo, is a wonderful film, but it reminded me heavily of "The Great Gatsby" in that it makes the narrator a character in the scenario. Sam Waterston was given the role of Daisy Buchanan's poorer cousin, Nick Carraway. In "Line" Nick Guest serves in much the same way, with the exception that Nick Guest never realized he was an outsider, whereas Nick Carraway always did. Also much like Hemingway's reaction to F. Scott Fitzgerald's (author of "Gatsby") that "The rich are very different from us" - "Yes, they have more money", Guest finds out that human emotions, in this case recrimination, blame and betrayal, are just as much a part of the upper class as the lower. Guest and Gatsby both admire the upper class and at some point in each story, believe themselves equal to them, until each are made to pay for the sins of those they admire. In Gatsby's case, he is mistakenly shot by the wife of a garage mechanic who believes him to be Daisy's husband Tom, who is both wealthy and immoral. It is a classic story of social separatism, told with an extra layer of the start of the AIDS epidemic. It is a fine job of writing and acting all around. I was particularly impressed with the final slap in the face Nick gets from the housekeeper, who should have been more sympathetic to Nick, but who is also self-deluded in her thinking that she is part of the family, and not an outsider.