William Adamson: Mark Rylance
Matty Crompton: Kristin Scott Thomas
Eugenia Alabaster: Patsy Kensit
Sir Harald Alabaster: Jeremy Kemp
Edgar Alabaster: Douglas Henshall
10 March 2003
by Jasmine Park
Philip Haas's 1995 film Angels and Insects belongs to that particular breed of period movie that started with Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and came to the fore with Jane Campion's The Piano (1993). Perhaps more so than any other genre of "high art" sex film, these films share an intimate connection to the corset-busting fantasies of soft porn and cheap romance novels - love stories set during some indiscriminate time of colonization where themes of love and betrayal play themselves out in bedrooms where doors remain open instead of discreetly closing just as the good stuff is about to start. In Angels & Insects, bedroom doors are opened even in moments when they might best be left shut, all in the name of high-falutin' art and metaphor.
A.S. Byatt's slim novel Morpho Eugenia serves as the starting point for this wisp of a story. Mark Rylance plays William Adamson, a scientist who has journeyed to the Amazon in search of rare specimen and arrives at the English mansion of a wealthy, elderly patron, Sir Harald Alabaster (Jeremy Kemp), to deliver a particularly rare catch, a species of butterfly named Morpho Eugenia. Allusions to late Victorian ideas are half-heartedly thrown into the script in conversations between William and Sir Harald about Darwinism and scientific progress, but the real meat of the story concerns William's attraction to John's daughter, who is conveniently named Eugenia (Patsy Kensit). Eugenia is presented as some damaged but desirable good; hints are made early on that her former fiance killed himself after discovering some flaw in his bride-to-be. Nevertheless, William insists upon courting her, and she, in spite of their class differences and desperate to purge herself of her unnamed misdeeds, agrees to marry him.
Insects and nature serve as the film's key motif: costumes are dazzling hues of contrasting colors and stripes, and the film has some lovely moments, as when the ladies alight on the lawn for tea like birds, or pick delicately through forest brush in striped frocks. Lurking in the background is Eugenia's good-for-nothin' brother, Edgar Alabaster (Douglas Henshall), who skulks about the house molesting the servants, and immediately sniffs a rival in William for both his father's and sister's affections. Also causing complications is the watchful governess of Eugenia's younger sisters, Matty Crompton (Kristin Scott Thomas). Matty is the brainy counterpoint to Eugenia, dressed in dour colors with her dark hair tied back severely, an obvious contrast to Eugenia's pre-Raphaelite sumptuousness. When Eugenia baffles her husband by strictly limiting his entry to their bedroom to once a season but giving birth to perfectly blond babies, one after another, Matty provides William with care of a more cerebral nature, and they begin writing a book together on the patterns of ant colonies.
The real twist in the film comes not when William finds himself besotted by Matty in a triumph of intellect over sex appeal, but in a wretchedly desperate twist that, when revealed, only causes the audience to feel like dirty old sots for having suspected all along. William is called back anonymously from a hunt only to discover his wife's dirty little secret. That night in a parlor game, Matty alerts William to the fact that others in the house also know, perhaps have always known, all by a convenient rearranging of the lettered cards in her hand. This moment is unduly clever, even charming, and makes me wonder whether the idea of the novel might have sprung entirely by the realization by Byatt that two particular, dissimilar words can be created by rearranging the same group of letters, in the same way that a mediocre song can spring from one catchy phrase.
The casting of the film's principal characters is its most obvious flaw. Mark Rylance barely registers as anything at all, other than with his bizarre attempt at a working-class Scottish accent. His soft-spoken, expressionless manner do nothing to endear him to the audience; when at last he discovers the source of his marital unease, it is hard for this climax to feel like anything other than comeuppance. Patsy Kensit is entirely wrong for the role; like Elle Macpherson in Zeffirelli's Jane Eyre (1996) and Minnie Driver in The Governess (1998), Kensit's looks are attractive only by modern tastes, and she looks positively brutish in some scenes attempting to play a proper young Victorian woman. Only Kristin Scott Thomas emerges unscathed. As in her highly sympathetic role in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Thomas gets to play second fiddle to some other, supposedly sexier heroine, only to steal scene after scene.
But the film's central mistake is a largely literary one. What makes semi-talented novelists mediocre is the obviousness with which they create stories that don't quite hold up under critical scrutiny. The film aspires to grandiose metaphors in its broad allusions to science and evolution, but aside from its passing charms, it has little of quality to be remembered by. In the end, its most striking aspect registers merely on the level of cheap thrills, allowing one a titillating glimpse of a big social no-no in action.
Directed by Philip Haas. Written by Belinda and Philip Haas. Based on the novella Morpho Eugenia by A.S. Byatt. Running time: 117 minutes. No MPAA rating (nudity, sexuality and mature situations).
Mark Rylance and Kristin Scott Thomas in
Angels & Insects.
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