HOW DOES IT FEEL NOW YOU’VE BEEN UNDRESSED/BY A MAN WITH A MIND LIKE THE GUTTER PRESS: So, “Wilde,” starring Stephen Fry as aforementioned and Jude Law as co-respondent. Some thoughts:

1. It was a lot less sentimental than I expected. Admittedly, this is a bar so low Namor gets drunk here every night, but still. I loved the first and final scenes. Only the on-the-nose use of “The Selfish Giant” conformed fully to my expectations.

2. No, let’s back up. Before I talk about this movie at all, I should really say that biopics and biographies of all kinds creep me out like whoa. These projects say so much more about their creators than about their subjects–and so often lack all self-overhearing–that I feel like I’m pawing through the underwear drawer of an entire culture. I feel about biographies the way some people seem to feel about fanfiction: Isn’t this really distressingly derivative?

3. OK, but so given that, “Wilde”: Fry is unexpectedly awesome. I like him always, but kind of thought the political/cultural weight of the project might sink him. And it almost does. I think possibly he has too much dignity in this role. But he also has this brilliant face, where you can see thoughts moving under a still surface–I don’t know how you do that. And he does a thing where he bites his lower lip, which I don’t remember as a Fry tic but which works perfectly here: Check it out esp. in the scene with the first kiss-this-guy moment.

Jude Law was made for this, as well. He’s so pretty that I always forget that he can act. His accent felt really fake to me–and for all I know it’s his real one, and he’s been Upper-Class Twit of the Year fifteen years running, but still it felt fake (and not an in-character kind of fake)–but man, he was perfect as Lord Alfred Douglas.

But I think that to do what it seemed to want to do, the movie needed to be a four-handed piece: Wilde, Douglas, Constance, and Robert Ross. And while that’s super awesome and much more what I’d want than a pure Wilde/Douglas movie, I thought both the writing and the acting for Constance and Ross weren’t a match for Fry-Wilde and Law-Douglas. Constance just comes across as totally inscrutable and bland (and there’s a weird acting/lipstick choice where she seems to be smiling in the Wildes’ prison conference, which just doesn’t work at all). Ross is ridiculous, a spaniel, and while that actually intrigued me (you totally understand why no one listened to him when he told Wilde to drop the feud with the Marquess; and his ridiculousness underlines the sacrifice-dignity-for-love theme), still the character needed to be stronger or more memorable in order to carry the weight the script required of him. He does get the very last line in the aftertitles, quite poignant.

Also, it was pretty interesting to watch this right after “Edward II,” since the plots are vaguely similar. The juxtaposition suggests that you can completely Bizarro-World reverse the personalities of Constance/Isabella and Ross/Mortimer and still get the same result–from a secular perspective. But “Wilde” is much less secular than “EII.”

4. I had expected the movie simply to ignore the religious drama of Wilde’s life. It doesn’t. Instead, it sets up that drama beautifully in the first half of the movie–and then totally drops it. What?? Both the themes and the pacing of the movie are badly thrown off by the decision to bring in the Marquess’s atheism, Ross’s Catholicism, and Wilde’s awesome Cath-symp provocations… and then forget them.

Overall: If you don’t already want to see this movie, don’t bother. If you do already want to see it, don’t take it off your list. It’s significantly better than it needed to be.