Prick Up Your Ears

The film opens in August 1967 with two bodies found in a flat in Islington: the playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell. Then it goes back. When they met at drama school Orton was the inexperienced young one and Halliwell the sophisticated older man. Over the years the roles reversed; Orton's talent took off while Halliwell stayed where he was. Their domestic life ran on as a parody of a traditional marriage until Halliwell killed Orton and then himself. Stephen Frears directed. Alan Bennett wrote the screenplay from John Lahr's 1978 biography. Gary Oldman plays Orton and Alfred Molina plays Halliwell, with Vanessa Redgrave as the literary agent Peggy Ramsay and Wallace Shawn as Lahr. The budget was 1.9 million pounds. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 92 percent and Metacritic at 72. Roger Ebert gave four stars and called Oldman the best young British actor around. Redgrave won Best Supporting Actress from the New York Film Critics Circle and took BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. Who it is for: viewers interested in writers' lives and in sixties London. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the flavour of Orton's plays. This is not comedy but an account of how an attachment turned lethal.