The Picture of Dorian Gray

At the Outfest screening in July 2007, the director told us "If you haven't read the book, this picture will make no sense. For those of you who have read the book, I sincerely apologize." He also said "This is a difficult film." We thought he meant difficult to make, but after seeing it we realize he meant difficult to watch. He said his intent was to remake "The Picture of Dorian Gray" with the gay undertone highlighted. For whatever reason, he chose to throw out conventional film narrative style and make an experimental film. The result is dream-like, confusing, and disjoint. It's a hard film to make sense of, even if one knows the story well. If you aren't already familiar with the story, you'll have no idea what is going on.

The film does succeed in making explicit the gay subtext of the story and previous adaptations, but don't expect a conventional film.

Just saw this picture at Outfest and I absolutely loved it. Don't have a clue what the folks here are talking about. But as they say an opinion is like an ass, everybody has one and there are too many pretentious ones here who believe to be the worlds film critics. The film was eloquent,lyrical, poetic and very artistic. I saw and loved Duncan's previous work AKA and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have seen several versions of Dorian Gray and found this one to be original, entertaining and disturbing. I applaud the filmmaker for his innovative choices and I know, not hope, that this film will get distribution and released in theatres for I happen to work for a film distribution company, so most other distributors would be doing us a favor if they choose to go with the other negative comments here. I'd be more than happy to bring this version of Dorian Grey to screens. I look forward to Duncan's future great works.

Wow what a spectacularly pretentious and boring film. The first act of it is nearly unwatchable and comes off like a bad Calvin Klein "Obsession" ad parody.

I give the film 2 stars instead of 1 because, with a couple notable exceptions, the acting is quite good for this type of movie. Also, I applaud the director for at least trying to be daring. But those are the only compliments I can find for this movie.

I thought that just about everything else in the film failed miserably. The direction was utterly incoherent with only those already very familiar with Oscar Wilde's original story able to piece things together at all in the first half of the film.

The film is unsettling, sometimes presumably intentionally so, because there is nearly constant background noise distracting from the dialog/narrative. Televisions or unseen radios blare out repetitive monologues or inexplicable buzzing sounds can be heard. This aspect could have been worsened by a poor choice of the theater I saw it in where they apparently chose to turn the volume way up so the often mumbled dialog could be heard. Whatever the cause, the background noise was extremely grating. At least the terrible sound mixing would occasionally have the unintended consequence of waking up the bored audience when an inappropriately loud sound would suddenly slap them upside the head. I can see the intention with a buzzing snooze alarm, but when someone setting a glass on a table gives the audience a jolt (and a headache), that is not a good thing.

One of the worst failures of the film itself is the mixing of Wilde's dialog with contemporary dialog. You can certainly take old dialog and modernize everything else about a story very successfully (see "Romeo + Juliet" for one example). And I'm sure there are other movies that mix old and new dialog in a contemporary setting with success. But here you can always tell which lines of dialog were lifted from Wilde because they sound like they came from a much more interesting story. Often times, embarrassingly enough, they are used in a way that suggests the director has misinterpreted their meaning or tried to give them much greater meaning than Wilde intended. This is not helped by jarring and pretentious screens that pop up showing some of the lines of dialog.

So many others have listed other big problems with the film (casual racism, over-reaching and offensive AIDS story) that I won't detail them.

Suffice to say this film is a mess and should be avoided.

I really liked it although it's not going to please the multiplex crowd. David Gallagher is stunningly good as Dorian in this updated version of Oscar Wilde's tale of decadence and debauchery. The authentic whiff of contemporary corruption and depravity of the New York art world is chilling. Perhaps some of the other reviewers aren't that familiar with Wilde's text but I think Duncan Roy has created something that has the authentic spirit of the 1890s.Wilde's witticisms and jibes at morality sit very well in a contemporary setting.

I was also in the same screening and the audience warmly applauded at the end.

This is a relatively low budget production but it looks like great. I loved the fact that the portrait is a video installation too.

Being a great fan of Duncan Roy's "AKA", I was very excited to see this work at the Miami filmfest. Sad to say, I was pretty much embarrassed to have brought my friends to "Dorian Gray." Where to begin? The film was plodding and in great need of editing. The dialog was unnatural & postured..even to the point of being silly. And plot...was there one? The split screens effects were interesting at times and more gimmicky at others. Even cute eye candy could not make you care about the characters or this sophomoric, unoriginal endeavor, for that matter . Most of the audience started shifting around & checking their watches halfway through the film...their thoughts mirroring mine of "when will this be over?!"

Duncan, please go back to narratives