Bright Young Things

London in the thirties. A group of young socialites move from night to night; they give costume parties, their names appear in the gossip columns and none of them works. Adam is one of them; he wants to be a writer and has written a book. He wants to marry Nina, but her father requires that he have money first. Adam's book is found obscene at customs and burned. He has nothing. He wins a bet and entrusts the money to a stranger; the man disappears. The parties continue. Then the war comes. Stephen Fry writes and directs; it is his first film as director. Stephen Campbell Moore, Emily Mortimer, Michael Sheen, James McAvoy and Fenella Woolgar are in the cast. The source is Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies. Waugh wrote the novel at the start of the thirties and was describing his own circle; the name the press of the period gave that group is used as the film's title. Fry changed the ending of the novel and added a more closed finish. The matter it treats is emptiness; while the group amuses itself it produces nothing, and the film does not celebrate it. The costume and set design are its strongest side. Its last section changes the register entirely; the war scenes come immediately after the parties. The cast includes many actors not yet known at the time. Its limit is structure; the narrative proceeds in pieces and there are many characters. Who it is for: viewers who like British period production and adaptations of Waugh. Who it is not for: it is scattered, the characters shallow, and the change of register abrupt.