Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 24, 1995                   TAG: 9511240080
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FILM DOESN'T DO JUSTICE TO CARRINGTON

Especially these words, at the beginning of the movie "Carrington": "This is the story of her life."

The "her" is Dora Carrington (1893-1932), a talented painter who eschewed the life of art (except in private) for the life of love. Mainly, the love of one man - the brilliant, homosexual English writer Giles Lytton Strachey.

But to call this movie the story of her life is either wishful thinking or a sign of desperation on the part of first-time director Christopher Hampton, who wrote the script.

What this movie can claim to be is a sometimes incoherent, chronological depiction of a few of Carrington's sexual liaisons, several warm, loving moments with her "most darling" Lytton and her sad, inevitable suicide. It offers very little in the way of enlightenment about who she was, the forces that created her or her art or what she thought about anything.

Except Lytton Strachey.

And that's where the moderately good news comes in.

Jonathan Pryce plays Strachey, and does so beautifully. Not a household word by any means and completely unfamiliar to most people, Lytton Strachey shared some of Carrington's distaste for ambition. He didn't even like to write, he admitted, and thought he was better at living than writing.

But when his collection of biographical essays, "Eminent Victorians," was published - to great public and critical acclaim - Strachey apparently made the adjustment easily to darling of the literary elite.

Pryce seems to have thoroughly understood Strachey, and he perfectly conveys the man's wit and growing attachment to the unabashedly adoring Carrington (played by Emma Thompson). The two lived together for many years. She brought him tea, wiped his pen tips and seemed nearly always comfortable with the oddness of their relationship.

The two had sexual relationships with others. This movie makes that all too clear, as if attempting to make the point that even the most perfect of platonic relationships is doomed to collapse under the pressure of convention.

But that's not the point at all. Or, at least, it should not be. Because it constitutes a waste of these two interesting characters to summarize their lives in terms of their sexuality. And it certainly constitutes a waste of Emma Thompson to give her such a thinly drawn character to play.

So much is left in the dark by Hampton's script that it's hard to see what drew him to this story in the first place.

Strachey? Maybe.

Carrington? Not, possible, and for now, she remains a mystery.

Carrington **

A PolyGram release showing at The Grandin Theatre. Rated R for sexually explicit language and scenes. 120 minutes.