Photos: Keith Vaughan, 1939

THE HAPPY PRINCE, written and directed by, as well as starring, Rupert Everett, opens in cinemas across the UK on 15 June. 

The film had its UK premiere on 28 March as part of the BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival, following world and European premieres at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals. 

The final years of Oscar Wilde, and the ghosts that haunted him, are vividly evoked in Everett’s directorial debut.  

The film opens in Paris, where Wilde, by now in his forties, penniless and in poor health, is still reeling after being imprisoned in England for his love affair with Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas (Morgan). 

Out of prison but a pariah, Wilde swings between grief and a determination to wrest whatever pleasure and beauty he can from the time he has left. His body ailing and heavy, his mind spinning, he survives by falling back on the flamboyant irony and brilliant wit that defined him...

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes
that the wicked have committed, but by

by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

Oscar Wilde

Drawings by Martin Bedolla

more here and here

La convergence des emmerdeurs

Pedro Maia: The Perfect Boy

Have you forgotten what we were like then

 when we were still first rate

My name is Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

"La différence entre Conrad et moi était subtile,
comme celle du marbre et de l'albâtre."

Edouard Manet, Le déjeuner dans l'atelier (1868)

Huile sur toile, 118 x 154 cm. Neue Pinakothek, Munich.
Click here to enlarge

Pendant que des mortels la multitude vile,
Sous le fouet du Plaisir, ce bourreau sans merci,
Va cueillir des remords dans la fête servile...

and lead us not into temptation.

Fifi, Lulu & Co.

"People talk a lot as if the most important thing in life is to always see things for what they really are. But everything we do, every plan we make, is kind of a lie. We're closing our eyes and pretending that the day won't ever come when we won't need to make any more plans. Hope is the biggest lie there is, and it is the best. We have to keep going as if it all mattered, or else we wouldn't keep going at all."