(1999)
3.5
Mike Cummings
Aristocrats is Gone With the Wind with a British accent. While chronicling the fortunes and misfortunes of highborn daughters with kingly connections, the production burgeons with jewels, powdered wigs, prancing horses, stately manors, and the life-giving fodder of the drawing-room: scandal, gossip, and power politics. A soap opera on a grand scale, Aristocrats arrays itself in the full panoply of English life in an age when position, power, and the ring of expensive china means everything. The costumes, architecture, and verdant gardens are beautiful, and the cinematography captures them adeptly. Development of the main characters is broad: knaves have their good points, heroes have their bad points. The actors -- all fourscore of them -- generally distinguish themselves with their ability to wring snobbery, desire, cruelty, and love from the script. Particularly good are Serena Gordon (as Caroline Lennox), Geraldine Somerville (as Emily Lennox), Anne-Marie Duff (as Louisa Lennox), and Jodhi May (as Sarah Lennox), the four sisters on whom most of the action centers. The production is not without flaws, however. A fifth sister is introduced, then dies, and one wonders why the scriptwriters bothered to include her at all. In part three, older actors assume the roles of the aging sisters, husbands, and relatives while other new faces appear as the next generation of aristocrats. It isn't easy to tell who's who, especially when scenes change swiftly as the action approaches a climax during upheaval in Ireland. Still, the production is a worthy one, skillfully depicting an age of turmoil and change.
Aristocrats on AllMovie
Aristocrats (1999)
