Carrington (1995)

Directed by: Christopher Hampton | 120 minutes | drama, romance, biography | Actors: Emma Thompson, Jonathan Pryce, Steven Waddington, Samuel West, Rufus Sewell, Penelope Wilton, Janet McTeer, Peter Blythe, Jeremy Northam, Alex Kingston, Sebastian Harcombe, Richard Clifford, David Ryall, Stephen Boxer, Annabel Mullion, Gary Turner, Georgiana Dacombe, Helen Blatch, Neville Phillips, Christopher Birch, Daniel Betts, Simon Bye, Marzio Idoni, Eva Gray

Love comes in many shapes and sizes. Most Hollywood movies are about standard love situations: romance and eroticism, but also love between parent and child, brother and sister and between friends. The love that artist Dora Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey felt for each other in the early twentieth century cannot be categorized. Carrington, a straight woman in her early twenties when she lost her virginity, becomes captivated by the inveterate gay Strachey fifteen years her senior, whom she admires and with whom she can be herself. Strachey returns her affection and a special relationship is formed, a commitment that turns out to be stronger than anything else. Because a person needs sexual contact, other men also appear in their lives. But wherever they come and go, Carrington and Strachey always stay together. Till death do them part.

The biographical film ‘Carrington’ (1995) observes the pair, played by Emma Thompson and Jonathan Pryce, from their first meeting, during the First World War. Strachey is a staunch pacifist, while Carrington (she doesn’t like her first name Dora) would like nothing more than to be a man so she can report to the front. They are almost instantly attracted to each other, but not in the way you would expect. Their seventeen-year relationship is explained on the basis of six chapters. Virtually every chapter is named after the man who nestles between them. To Mark Getler (Rufus Sewell), for example, who finally gets Carrington into bed after much persuasion. Or Ralph Partridge (Steve Waddington), whom she marries, but really only because Strachey finds him so attractive. In between, she has an affair with Ralph’s best friend Gerald Brenan (Samuel West), from whom she becomes unintentionally pregnant. But there’s always Strachey, her rock in the surf.

She finds it difficult to accept that he also has his needs and that he occasionally hangs out with young men himself. Debut director Christopher Hampton and cinematographer Denis Lenoir capture this brilliantly in a scene where Carrington watches their rural retreat Ham Spray House in the dark and watches through the windows as both Strachey and Ralph are socializing with one another. You can feel her loneliness at such a moment. The cinematography is in any case a strong point of ‘Carrington’, as is the acting of Thompson and Pryce, two versatile British actors who apparently make the emotions of their characters palpable without too much effort. Those who let themselves be carried away in this special and ultimately tragic love story will get a lot in return. ‘Carrington’ is a stylish, intelligent, true story that once again underlines how complex love can be.