The tragic story of Oscar Wilde is undoubtedly one of the more formative and iconic in Western queer history - one that defined the idea of what it meant to be gay in the modern era for several generations.
The long shadow Wilde casts clearly weighs heavily on the mind of Rupert Everett, as the British actor best known for My Best Friend's Wedding and Saint Trinians here turns writer, director and star of The Happy Prince, a chronicle of the last days of Wilde's life.
A bleak film that nevertheless brims with the spirit and cheek of Wilde himself, Everett is here revealed as the man best suited to telling this particular tale, turning in a complex performance as Wilde, all the while crafting a fascinating ode to a figure clearly influential in Everett's life.
Everett's skill as a director is a little raw and rough around the edges, and yet what the audience ultimately leaves with is the immensity of his passion for this story.
Everett has argued that Wilde's suffering regularly echoed that of Christ himself, and The Happy Prince functions best as a kind of Biblical tale of suffering and transcendence, as Wilde finds himself in exile in Paris, slowly succumbing to illness and poverty.
