The Libertine - Palm Beach Post movie review

'The Libertine': A depraved Depp

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

As The Libertine opens, Johnny Depp as John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, addresses the audience and confidently predicts, "You will not like me." Take him at his word. It is not an exercise in reverse psychology.

The Weinstein Company

'The Libertine'

The verdict: Odd, off-putting, yet intriguing portrait of John Wilmot, unlikable as promised by a remarkable Depp.

Director: Laurence Dunmore
Starring: John Malkovich, Johnny Depp, Samantha Morton, Rosamund Pike, Tom Hollander
Run time: 110 minutes
Release date: March 10, 2006
Rating: R for strong sexuality including dialogue, violence and language.
See showtimes

On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

While you will wonder what possessed Depp to get involved in this lesson in kinky theatrical history, you are also bound to admire his commitment to the character. Wilmot was a first-class drinker and debaucher, a blunt-spoken writer of bawdy verse and ribald stage works, a man who died in 1680 of well-earned venereal disease. Still, Depp never winks at the camera or ever seems in search for a way to make himself likable.

If you find The Libertine a messy, occasionally incoherent and borderline pornographic film, you will be in agreement with many who have seen it already in the film's cautiously marketed release from the new Weinstein Company. And heaven help moviegoers who recently discovered Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and decide to see him here for more of the same.

Nevertheless, for those with patience and a high tolerance for bad taste, there is an intriguing, though very dark, biographical tale in this debut film by director Laurence Dunmore.

The Libertine has a similar sensibility to Quills, Doug Wright's sly portrait of the Marquis de Sade, and it has undeniable parallels to Stage Beauty. For Wilmot becomes smitten with the would-be actress Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton) and takes on the project of turning her into an anachronistically emotional Method acting performer.

Written by Stephen Jeffreys, who adapts his own stage play, the film begins as English King Charles II (a very subdued John Malkovich) summons Wilmot to court, following his umpteenth banishment. For all his impudence, Wilmot amuses the king, who commissions him to write a theater piece extolling his reign, to become his Shakespeare.

Wilmot, of course, would rather carouse with his drinking buddies, minor writers George Etherege (Tom Hollander) and Charles Sackville (Johnny Vegas), and frolic with wenches despite the presence of his exasperated wife (Rosamund Pike). For a while at least, Wilmot finds a purpose to his life when he sees the awkward Barry booed off a stage and he resolves to transform her into an actress without parallel. In the process, he falls in love with the relatively plain-looking woman.

Eventually, we get to see the play that Wilmot writes for the king, in a performance given in honor of the French ambassador. Picture an R-rated equivalent of The Producers' "Springtime for Hitler" number, with lots of damsels in diaphanous nightgowns and plenty of phallic symbolism.

The Libertine is necessarily brimming with excess, but it looks attractive, thanks to Alexander Melman's candlelit cinematography, whose shadows make up for a smaller budget than this story really requires.

By the end, as Wilmot lies dying, his face dripping blood and pus, his nose replaced by a silver prosthesis, it is Depp's performance that lingers. He constantly takes on challenging roles and certainly submerges his star image in the character each time. The Libertine is unlikely to be your favorite Depp movie, but seeing it without Depp is unimaginable.