In one sense this is two films in one, always difficult to pull off and more so when the contrast is so startling; for two thirds of the running time we're comfortably ensconced in the thirties and living the privileged life vicariously largely via the Lasts (James Wilby and Kristin Scott-Thomas) who rattle around with their small son in a Gothic pile except when Brenda (Scott-Thomas) is up in Town banging her sponging lover (Rupert Graves). The main problem here is that there is insufficient contrast between Wilby and Graves to convince us why Scott-Thomas elected him as a lover (I'm speaking of course merely about external appearance and outward behaviour; Beaver may well have been exceptional in bed but nothing about him hinted at excitement, in fact he and Wilby could easily have passed for brothers, and in those days Brenda would have no other yardstick). There's also a symbolic element which tends to be heavy-handed; having encountered an eccentric named Dr Messenger (geddit) Wilby decides more or less on the spot to underwrite the Dr's expedition to South America and go along himself for the ride so that the heavy-handed point being made is that he is leaving a moral jungle for a tangible one. The last third of the film finds him in the jungle, stricken with fever, left alone by Messenger who is never able to get the help he went in search of, and 'saved' by Tod (German for 'death') a white man gone native played by Alec Guinness, who cynically keeps him a prisoner in all but name. As we might expect with actors of this calibre the acting is first class as is the period feel and if you can accept the wrench from Shires to Jungle you may well enjoy it.
Review of A Handful of Dust
