This is NOT a serious depiction of the life and death of Joe Orton, even though the script is based on John Lahr's painstakingly researched biography. It's a good-looking film, with the ring of authenticity (e.g., set locations in the Underground and in public toilets). The script has a good "feel" for 1950s and 60s sensibility. And of course Gary Oldman LOOKS exactly like Joe Orton.
Nevertheless...it's all very tongue-in-cheek. It's Joe Orton's career as reimagined by Alan Bennett, author of 'A Private Function' (aka The Pig Movie), 'The Madness of George III,' 'History Boys,' 'Talking Heads,' et cet, et cet.
Bennett's specialty is drawing comic-grotesque miniatures--self-important little drudges and provincial dreamers. Here he gives himself free rein, turning the dutiful biographer John Lahr into a chatterboxy little elf played by Wallace Shawn. Kenneth Halliwell, Orton's longtime companion, muse, and eventual murder, was in real life a handsome, slightly built depressive; in this movie he becomes an enormous overbearing whinger (one of the best roles Alfred Molina has ever done).
Some of the most memorable characters are on only for a flash: Madame So-and-so, the acting and elocution teacher in Leicester; the local council representative who grandly calls on Orton's mother and declares that the boy must follow an acting career; the terrified book editor at Faber & Faber who turns down Orton and Halliwell's campy novel; Lahr's English mother-in-law, trying to put her feeble shorthand knowledge to good use as she deciphers Orton's youthful diary entries about 'having a good w*nk.'
Not everyone will appreciate the humor, to state the obvious. But if you like it at all, you'll like a lot and and want to keep it around for repeated viewings.
Nevertheless...it's all very tongue-in-cheek. It's Joe Orton's career as reimagined by Alan Bennett, author of 'A Private Function' (aka The Pig Movie), 'The Madness of George III,' 'History Boys,' 'Talking Heads,' et cet, et cet.
Bennett's specialty is drawing comic-grotesque miniatures--self-important little drudges and provincial dreamers. Here he gives himself free rein, turning the dutiful biographer John Lahr into a chatterboxy little elf played by Wallace Shawn. Kenneth Halliwell, Orton's longtime companion, muse, and eventual murder, was in real life a handsome, slightly built depressive; in this movie he becomes an enormous overbearing whinger (one of the best roles Alfred Molina has ever done).
Some of the most memorable characters are on only for a flash: Madame So-and-so, the acting and elocution teacher in Leicester; the local council representative who grandly calls on Orton's mother and declares that the boy must follow an acting career; the terrified book editor at Faber & Faber who turns down Orton and Halliwell's campy novel; Lahr's English mother-in-law, trying to put her feeble shorthand knowledge to good use as she deciphers Orton's youthful diary entries about 'having a good w*nk.'
Not everyone will appreciate the humor, to state the obvious. But if you like it at all, you'll like a lot and and want to keep it around for repeated viewings.