The Libertine: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

Laurence Dunmore's "The Libertine" begins with Johnny Depp in close-up, his hooded eyes burning through the candlelit gloom, a glass of wine at the ready, his sharp, angular face reminiscent of a Picasso.

"Allow me to be frank at the commencement," he says. "You will not like me. The gentlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You will not like me now, and you will like me a good deal less as we go on. I am John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, and I do not want you to like me." And so we don't.

Not that it's difficult. As written by Stephen Jeffreys from his own play, "The Libertine" confirms what history knows--Wilmot was one grotesque, unlikable sod, indeed.

In what arguably is the most disagreeable role of Depp's career, the actor, one of our best, seems to be having a grand time playing the well-known writer-cum-sexaholic who couldn't give a toss for anyone, himself included. Yet Depp's enjoyment isn't transcendent. The movie is a grimy, uninvolving mess, with too much of the writing proving just as sloppy as the muddy sets and the unwashed cast.

The film saddles Depp's 17th-century satirist with the sort of dialogue that could pull the glue out of a horse: "I wish you to shag with my homuncular image rattling in your gonads," he says to the camera, which somehow remains steady. "I want you to feel how it was for me--how it is for me--and ponder, 'Was that shudder the same shudder he sensed? Did he know something more profound?'" Doubtful.

The movie is concerned with a few things--the betrayal of the writer, for one, the peculiar times for another--but nothing moreso than sex. It takes place, after all, during the Restoration, when bared breasts, loose talk, public fondling and orgies apparently were the order of the day. So was syphilis, which Wilmot contracted, but we'll get to that later.

The film's hook is King Charles II (John Malkovitch, looking uneasy behind a phony nose), who has charged the gifted Wilmot to write the sort of piece that will champion his reign, as Shakespeare did for Queen Elizabeth.

What Charles gets instead is a damaging satire, which ignites in him a rage that should have set the movie ablaze, but doesn't. It falls flat.

Meanwhile, Wilmot is busy ignoring his pitiful wife, Elizabeth (Rosamund Pike), for the actress, Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton), with whom he falls in love before he gradually starts to waste away. Doubled over in pain, his nose rotting off his face, his skin flaking, eyes clouding, lips cracking, Wilmot keeps chugging along in an effort to anger and isolate everyone until he's nothing but an unrecognizable skeleton with a sketchy heartbeat.

For an actor like Depp who enjoys taking risks, the lure of such a role must have been intoxicating. The problem with the movie isn't him; he's having fun. Instead, it's the film's failed execution that sinks it. Dunmore tries to generate energy around the ongoing theatrics, but they consistently feel canned, silly, predictable. True, some will be repelled by this movie, but few will be envious.

Grade: D