Staccato

Do yourself a favor and see Maurice, the exquisite 1987 Merchant-Ivory movie about a gentleman in love with a gardener, instead of this excruciatingly, appallingly bad ripoff.

Maurice is one of the most beautiful and emotionally satisfying movies ever made. Everything about it--every detail, every word spoken, every performance by every actor (even Hugh Grant)--is absolute perfection, and the ending is both surprising and glorious.

This short movie is an obvious ripoff of Maurice, but it's as uniformly bad as Maurice is perfect. The intense pity I feel for its makers, for the time, effort and sincere commitment they obviously invested in it, hurts. I wish I hadn't seen it, but if it motivates even one person to see Maurice, it was worth making. Otherwise, no.

A correct crafted short film. Fair atmosphere, nice storytelling, good acting and seductive photography. Nothing special but far to be boring and giving just few beautiful scenes. So, nice.

I know it's a huge challenge to produce a period-costume drama on a budget. Period drama costs more money. But if you can't make it right, why bother to begin with? It's not that I'm asking it to be ravishing; but at least it has to be stylistically coherent.

I'd guess the drama is supposed to be set sometime in Victorian era... but then, while the costumes for female characters are vaguely late Victorian, why do men's resemble more of early 19C (as in George IV ear)? Gentleman not wearing a jacket even in his own home or maids not wearing a head dress are weird too... but ok, maybe I could let such details pass... In the dinner scene, I first wondered why they were having an afternoon tea in the dining room... Turned out they were having dinner... but why then is the tea served before dessert?

Then at the recital, men turn up finally more in Victorian black tie attire... but why does the pianist come on the stage wearing a top hat?

Apart from the production/costume designs, a lot more could have been wanted in the acting department too. All of them are lacking the stylistic understanding of playing a period character. Just putting up a cringe posh accent and bumping up the pretentious mannerism wouldn't do unless a parody of a period drama was the film's goal (it wasn't).

It could have been an OK film. But for its unprepared attempt to make it a period drama resulted in having too many flaws and distractions to just enjoy it.