Review: Dorian Gray - as perfect as the portrait in the attic

The opening passage of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is simply a sublime piece of writing, oozing with sumptuous language and stuffed with images of decadent lethargy which typify the lifestyle of Lord Henry Wotton, the corrupting force behind the downfall of beautiful young Dorian. The new film based on the book, however, opens with Dorian murdering an unseen victim, then dragging the body in a chest to the docks and dumping it in the Thames. It feels a lot more like the London of From Hell than the one conjured up by Wilde in the book’s early stages, and Dorian Gray the motion picture is a lot more hammy and playful than its source material. But is this ham a succulent one?

Dorian Gray roughly follows the course of the book, with Dorian (Ben Barnes) granted unending youth and beauty and a life of endless corporeal pleasure when he commits his soul to a portrait of himself. The painting, which he eventually has to keep locked out of sight in his attic, is the only testament to the scars of his misdeeds, and over the years it ages and becomes disfigured while Dorian himself does not change. If you haven’t read the book yet, see the movie first. That may be a slightly controversial suggestion, but doing it the other way around might be more damaging to your enjoyment of both. Dorian is spurred into his life of debauchery by the philosophising of Henry Wotton, played by Colin Firth, who insists that pleasure is the only purpose of life and that conscience is just a polite term for cowardice.

Firth is on top form, enjoying tons of Wilde’s best one liners and stringing out the seedy old man within him for all its worth. It’s his performance alone that makes the film easy to recommend, and provided you’re not too precious about the source material (which the film’s makers certainly weren’t) you’ll have an exciting ride into darkest London. Though some of the sets have the feel of a Madame Tussauds diorama about them, the rest of the period setting is handled well, and the costumes were spot on, which is something that I’m rarely impressed with.

There are plenty of slightly warped sex scenes in Dorian Gray, when a lot more is suggested than actually shown, though nipples, bottoms, tongues and teeth occasionally flash onscreen. Add to that a spot of violence, some great dialogue and effective if predictable CGI work on the painting, and you’ve got a very fun movie indeed that doesn’t outstay its welcome and adheres to the central themes of the novel whilst feeling fresh and modern in a way.