The Laureate

Struggling writer Robert Graves (Tom Hughes), his wife Nancy (Laura Haddock) and daughter Catherine (Indica Watson) move to a remote Oxfordshire home where they hope he can find some inspiration (and money!). It's whilst there that they read a poem from American author Laura Riding (Dianna Agron) and decide that they ought invite her over to stay for a while. Over she comes and what now ensues is an illustration of their much publicised menage-à-trois that also draws in the somewhat hapless Geoffrey Phibbs (Fra Fee) before heading for a denouement that is going to shake things up considerably! This film looks good, but none of the performances catch fire. Hughes is adequate and actually rather looks the part but neither Haddock nor Agron really raise their game enough to imbue this with any of the passion that this story must have generated at the time. It has a sterility to it which makes it rather self-indulgent at times, and I felt the whole thing a really rather lacklustre and wordy interpretation of the lives of three people that shook society, morals and the literary world. It will look fine on the television, so I wouldn't bother going to a cinema to watch it.

This was nothing but disgraceful waste of time and poison for my mind and heart. Immorality is honesty; that was the moral of this nonsense. A shameful blow to everything good, noble and clean.

... this film a lot like Dianna Agron's career... includes some very good work but to the outside entertainment audience little is known-of-about-it (her most widely acclaimed success going on a decade old and in which she appeared in only 60% of the series-episodes)

... commonly-beautiful, her images portray nearly a different looking woman in each one... knowing who she is, yet looking at some pictures of her and wondering who she is... now 38yo it will be very interesting to see how her future moves forward from this point

... here in Laureate she does some exceptional character-acting, standing out, matching the other leads scene-for-scene... once again the film not getting recognition deserved, only achieving slightly more than a 5-rating, when clearly it is really much-better than-that.

The full story of Robert Graves is almost unbelievable and worth a film being made about it. This is not it. Maybe a TV series might have been the answer as they seem to have tried to get a quart into a pint pot.

Agron is not mad enough to play Riding and Haddock playing Nicholson comes off as being g sappy instead of the feisty feminist she was.

As a result none of the drama comes off as being credible a d we are left with an interesting story, but that's all.

I don't understand the low average rating for this movie, or the high ratings for many "best-selling" movies.

Among many other virtues of this film, I would point out that it is at least a study of people being truly loving and bravely honest and generous with each other and themselves, in their intermingling relationships, much unlike the cowardly selfishness and jealousy of many usual, conventional relationships.