The Importance of Being Earnest film review

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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

Despite being described as a "comedy of manners", director Oliver Parker has been rude enough to impose himself a little too forcefully on The Importance Of Being Earnest. Fortunately Oscar Wilde's masterful work is able to withstand such tampering and still emerge as a mischievously witty delight. Why Parker, who was more restrained and successful with his 1999 rendition of An Ideal Husband, felt compelled to try and improve on Wilde's original vision is as mysterious as it is folly. It is one thing to liberate scenes from their original settings, but quite another to fabricate new ones entirely.

Wilde's genius for stinging wit and acute observation is timeless. It's what makes watching the pompous and eloquent Victorian British aristocracy politely making fools of themselves so engaging. Wilde himself subtitled Earnest "A trivial play for serious people." It is a description Parker would have done well to have respected, as his idea of when to be serious and when to be trivial often became muddled.

The film revolves around the mistaken identities of two young friends, the wealthy and intense Jack Worthing (Colin Firth) and the less affluent but frivolous Algernon Moncrieff (Rupert Everett). The confusion arises from Jack's invention of a brother, Ernest, who he claims to visit in London. Once in the swinging capital, where he meets up with Algy and makes bumbling advances towards the honorable Gwendolen Fairfax (Frances O'Connor), he refers to himself as Ernest. When the opportunist Algy, who's not adverse to some harmless invention himself, discovers this deception, he shows up at Jack's country estate masquerading as brother Ernest in the hope of wooing Jack's young charge Cecily (Reese Witherspoon).

The tangled web of romantic deceipt is further complicated when Gwendolin reveals her fascination for the name Ernest - "it produces vibrations" - and her forboding mother, Lady Bracknell (the ever brilliant Judi Dench), considers her suitor unsuitable because as an infant he had the misfortune to have been found in a handbag at Victoria Station. Although Wilde meant this twist as a jovial stab at the snobbery of class, Parker has chosen to emphasis its traumatic impact on Jack, including flashbacks of him viewing the world from within the bag. Furthermore, Firth's decision to play Jack as dull rather than serious insures that much of the humour is stifled by a sense of pity.