The Libertine

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! There May Be SPOILERS in the movie reviews !

By BRITTANY SCHAEFFER

Rupert Friend and Joan Plowright in 'Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont,' which opens Friday.
The first thing audiences will notice about Rupert Friend is his smashing good looks, which have already inspired comparisons to Orlando Bloom's. What Friend hopes they'll remember is his acting.

"With regards to being eye candy, it's very kind of people to say that about me," Friend says. "But it's not enough from a character point of view."

The 24-year-old Londoner can be seen in three new movies - his first three.

In the Restoration drama "The Libertine," in theaters Friday, he plays a naive lad befriended and betrayed by a debauched aristocrat (Johnny Depp).

In "Pride & Prejudice," currently in theaters, he is the two-faced Wickham, who, having wooed Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley), runs off with her giddy adolescent sister Lydia (Jena Malone).

In "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont," also out Friday, Friend plays a lonely writer opposite Joan Plowright

So where does this newcomer stand on his opening salvo?

LED ASTRAY

In "The Libertine," Friend's Billy Downs is involved in a destructive, semi-erotic relationship with Depp's Earl of Rochester, a real-life 17th-century poet-scoundrel. Stephen Jeffreys, who adapted the screenplay from his play, says the filmmakers wanted to give an unknown actor a break when they cast Downs, and that he was struck by Friend's ability to play a man who's unsure of himself.

"Much has to be said about Downs without words and through delicate touches. I think Rupert's extremely good at that," says Jeffreys, who envisioned the character as a "boyish woman."

Friend describes Downs as "the only innocent character" in the movie, one who's led astray by Rochester and his bawdy cohorts. "He's akin to a lap dog. Somebody who's used as and when and how Rochester wants."

SIMPLY FLAWED

Friend says he has difficulty watching "Pride & Prejudice." While Wickham lies about his past and nearly ruins the Bennet family's reputation by eloping with Lydia, the actor says he's unconvinced Wickham is duplicitous.

"If there's one hole, it's that there's no evidence for Wickham's story being untrue whatsoever," he says. "I stand by the slightly contentious belief that he isn't a baddie."

He says his goal was to show that Wickham is simply flawed. He describes the scene in which Wickham dines with the Bennets after marrying Lydia as "filled with great sadness for him," which he conveys by eating silently, staring at the food on his plate.

"Here he is with Lydia, who's on the edge of being grating, and you kind of get the feeling that, if you were married to that girl, you wouldn't be in the best of moods either."

A HINT OF ROMANCE

In "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont," Friend's Ludovic Meyer becomes close to an elderly widow (Plowright) who's been abandoned by her family to live in a hotel for seniors. His relationship to her is more than that of a surrogate son.

"If that film taught me anything, it's that the things that you're looking for aren't always necessarily where you're looking for them," Friend says. "Even people who seem to have everything have the same insecurities as everyone else. Ludo's a good-looking guy, but he's creatively blocked - and then Mrs. Palfrey unblocks him."

He says that he and Plowright intended to keep the nature of the relationship ambiguous. "It isn't definable," he says, noting that the romantic connection between the two wasn't a stretch. "Joan Plowright has an inner beauty that has nothing to do with age."

Plowright, 76, says Friend is "an extraordinarily promising actor" - and she should know, being the widow of Laurence Olivier. "It's his naturalness that struck me. He didn't force anything, and he took the character and made it his own."

"I went to Joan's house and we bashed out the script," Friend recalls. "It was incredible, because you've got pictures of Sir Laurence looking down on you."

Originally published on November 20, 2005

ONCE I really did have a taxi driver ask me if I knew who he had had in the back of his cab. The answer was Johnny Depp.

The conversation took place in the Isle of Man where Depp had been filming The Libertine and the fact that our chat took place early last year suggests just how long it takes some movies to reach your local multiplex.

There had been some problems with the film - it was re-edited following a Toronto work-in-progress screening last year - and some of the flow is lost as a result.

And it is very much Depp's film playing the notorious real-life 17th Century rake the Earl of Rochester who became a favourite of Charles II.

Depp plays it with the swagger he perfected in Pirates of the Caribbean, although with an added twist - Rochester's bawdy life soon told on his looks and Depp gradually turns pretty ugly by the end. Based on Stephen Jeffreys's 1994 play with Jeffreys also providing the film script, it opens with the Earl (also known as John Wilmot) addressing the audience directly and warning, "You will not like me".

Indeed it is difficult to like a chap who seems to live for his own self-indulgence, cheating on his wife, drinking heavily and generally behaving like a bounder. Only Depp's twinkle in his eye keeps us on board for him.

He is recalled to London by Charles II who is missing his old friend. The king is played by John Malkovich who once played Wilmot on stage. Malkovich in a false nose seems to be having fun. Once in London, he meets up with playwright Sir George Ether-ege (an excellent Tom Hollander) and his Falstaff-style mate Charles Sackville (Johnny Vegas in typical Vegas mode).

Having fallen for a budding actress (Samantha Morton), the Earl has a bet with his friends that he can turn her into a star with personal coaching. He also agrees to write an entertainment in honour of the French ambassador, a show that is sexually well over the top.

The Libertine has an episodic structure that serves it well enough and a supporting cast that offers Depp some lively background

British director Laurence Dunmore, making his movie debut from an advertising background, gives his scenes plenty of muck and dirt, a grim England indeed. But he also uses a lot of low lighting so sometimes you feel you are peering through the gloom to catch the action.

The script concentrates on only one aspect of the Earl's life, the best-known, his naughty ways. But he was by some accounts a good poet, although much of it was not published until after his death, and in his early days, at least, a sea hero.

All this is virtually ignored to allow us to be shocked and appalled at Rochester's outrageous behaviour, wonderfully delineated by Depp at his most theatrical.

The Earl was dead of syphilis by the age of 33, a life squandered in a tragic tale of self-destruction.

philkey@dailypost.co.uk

The Manx government offered the island as a production base after changes in UK tax laws left the future of the project in doubt.  Stephen Jeffreys, who wrote both the stage play and film, said the 2004 changes "almost destroyed" it.  The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp as the 17th Century poet John Wilmot, opened across the UK on Friday.

Backer withdrew

"The film was almost destroyed by changes to the tax laws until the Isle of Man stepped in and saved it," Mr Jeffreys said.
He said co-star John Malkovich had been filming on the Isle of Man at the same time for a film called Colour Me Kubrick.
"They had a major funder drop out so it wasn't made, but the Manx government said we could film The Libertine there," said Mr Jeffreys.

The Libertine has been nominated for eight British Independent Film Awards, including best actor for Depp.  The actor stars as the 17th Century Earl of Rochester, who received posthumous acclaim after living a debauched life.  About 300 islanders were cast as extras in the movie, which also stars Samantha Morton.

NOVICE film director Laurence Dunmore was in downtown Los Angeles when Johnny Depp called to say: "Count me in". The 40-year-old earned strange looks from

passers-by as he punched the air, yelling "yes! yes! yes!".

He knew the precarious funding and casting of his first feature The Libertine relied on a big star taking a punt on working with him.

"It was like pinch yourself and see if this is one of those big long dreams that you are sad to wake up from," says the dad-of-three from St John's Wood.

Depp's involvement in the Restoration-set drama meant a gifted cast including Rosamund Pike, Samantha Morton, Tom Hollander and Johnny Vegas also came on board.

"It was a courtship over a year. Johnny already loved the play and wanted to do it, but any actor, however exciting the project, has to trust the people who are making it. It was amazing how willing he and everyone has been to trust and believe in my vision for this film."

It helped that Dunmore, an experienced director of music videos and commercials, was championed by Hollywood heavyweight John Malkovich.

The pair hit it off when Dunmore worked with Malkovich on a Eurostar advert.

Malkovich was so impressed with Dunmore's working style that he handed him the script for The Libertine, based on an acclaimed play by Stephen Jeffreys.

As producer, Malkovich, who previously played the lead part on stage, had spent five years trying to get the project to fly.

It was Dunmore who persuaded him to act in the film as an ageing King Charles II, insecure about his international alliances and divine right to rule.

"John Malkovich said 'I want you to make the film'. I said 'it's a period costume drama' and he said 'read it again'. He didn't want to act in it but I told him he would help me by being in the soup as an actor," says Dunmore.

Malkovich was not disappointed with the experience and says of Dunmore: "You can work with people who have done 25 films and still don't know what day it is, and you can work with a first-time director who has a terrifically specific idea about exactly what they want to achieve and how to achieve it - that was the case with Laurence."

Now Dunmore has been nominated as best director - alongside Stephen Frears - for the British Independent Film Awards on November 30, one of eight nominations garnered by his film.

The Libertine, with its gorgeous Michael Nyman score, is based on the scandalous life and early death of John Wilmot the 2nd Earl of Rochester - the inspiration for George Etherege's play The Man of Mode.

Despite wealth, charisma, intelligence and writing talent, the self-destructive poet pursued notions of individual freedom to the debauched limit.

The film shows his rebellious, boozy, sexual exploits alienating his King, his friends and the women who love him.

Dunmore, who lives off Abbey Road, says Depp was one of few actors who could pull off such an unsympathetic character.

"Rochester was 'a cynic of our golden age', a man who betrayed an incredible talent and ability because he didn't have a desire to realise it. He wanted to lampoon, throw his anger out there to see how it could hurt people. He was funny, outrageous, could drink and tell jokes, a man sensitive enough to understand people but insensitive enough to follow through. Johnny Depp was one of very few actors who could realise those contradictions and still let us feel a degree of sympathy for him."

In his artistic genius, nihilism and lust for self-destruction, Rochester is kind of Restoration punk, frantically sowing the seeds of his death in his lifestyle.

"It's that urge to know you are alive by burning yourself," says Dunmore.

"The demons he is fighting are of his own making."

His profane, edgy work wasn't recognised during his lifetime but Dunmore says he had an impressive wit, humour and turn of phrase that could have created a masterpiece if he had set his mind to it.

"Etherege makes his name out of telling his best friend's story. He was someone who watched life while Rochester lived it."

Dunmore achieved the seemingly impossible task of making Depp look ugly as the booze and syphilis eat away at Rochester.

"Johnny relished the physical destruction of him most of all. There is not a vanity in him that I can see. People love to play against what they are. It fascinated him, portraying a life that decayed morally and physically. It's very easy to play good looking, it's harder to show someone's destruction - by the time Rochester is a human scab he is at his most vulnerable."

Dunmore also says of Depp that he is an "intuitive, generous actor" able to dip in and out of his character at will.

"He researches an awful lot to find that character and bring it alive, then it comes through whenever he wants it to - he can play a compelling and believable session and at the end make a silly joke. It sits just below the surface. It's amazing to watch."

Dunmore admits it was "quite intimidating initially" to switch from 30-second commercials to a two-hour film.

But despite having little experience of directing actors in roles, he has succeeded in eliciting fine performances by letting his actors have their heads.

"I learned that people are there because they are good and you can trust them. I saw I was dealing with some of the best actors and let them do what they have been noted for - I gave them a vision and allowed them to find their characters."

Dunmore's film is a highly theatrical, atmospheric immersion in squalid 17th century life, including several memorable scenes in a Restoration-era playhouse where Wilmot repeatedly returns to experience the emotion he cannot feel in life.

He falls in love with the actress Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton) and helps her realise her talent.

"I saw how empowered John Wilmot was by the theatre and it was a conscious decision to have a theatrical aspect to the film," says Dunmore.

"Theatre is the only place where he can feel intimacy. I have always found the power of the naked actor on stage compelling. It takes you to places without need of $60million backdrops."

To capture the raw immediacy of a stage performance, Dunmore shouldered a hand-held camera and allowed Morton and Depp to play an 11-page scene in one take on the darkened, empty stage of a reconstructed 17th century theatre.

Where conventional directors might have blocked out moves or set up close-up shots, Dunmore told them to find their own space and he would follow them - even though it meant Depp frequently having to haul him out of the way as various candles threatened to set fire to him.

"You have a space with two formidable actors and they are empowered to take that space and breathe life into the scene. It was amazing just the three of us alone on that stage. You can capture the intake of breath or the intimacy of a whisper. The actors liked the freedom that gave them and the film audience feel like the third person," says Dunmore.

Exploring the dark side of a man's soul, Dunmore didn't compromise on explicit language or sex - earning the film an 18 rating.

He says it would have been "pointless" to bring such an unconventional life to film and sanitise it.

"I didn't want to make a crowd-pleaser. This is not a film about redemption," he says. "I want to allow the audience to walk away from it and ask questions about themselves. Part of the fascination is not to resolve it or offer answers to all the questions."

Dunmore also refused to pander to the costume drama staple of elegant National Trust Britain - in his film, the sun never shines on London streets, which are swathed in mud and excrement.

"I didn't want to make a film that had been seen before with beautiful landscapes and backlit romantic walks in long grass," says Dunmore, whose pallet was the muddy tones of the damp British sky and earth.

"One of the most time-consuming parts of filming was making hundreds of tonnes of mud and slapping it onto beautiful National Trust properties. Every day you were covered head to toe in it - we told the costume department not to spend time cleaning stuff every night."

Dunmore now has several other feature projects on the go but was nervously awaiting the film's opening today.

"The passion and excitement of The Libertine was an incredible experience with so much hard work packed into so little time. We had some of the funniest people in the country on set and had a great laugh. I would love to spend the rest of my life making feature films. Whatever happens with The Libertine I hope it will not determine my future - I hope that is in my own hands.

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