Too clean

Rating: Null/10 (3 November 2001)

Too clean, too pretty, too nice---
This was an ugly, dirty era, and a bitter, nasty time in the era, but somehow, even as our central figures suffer disease, cough up blood, and generally display ill health we wind up with a painting of light that manages to ignore the bitter ugliness of the era.
If it had been a bit dirtier, if we had seen that even the rich were forced to scratch their lice, if the ugly undertones of adult and child prostitution had been shown more clearly it would have been more understandable why they were willing go to such extremes to escape a hopeless life "at the fringe" of society.
You cannot fault the actors; you can fault the writers and producers for not making sure the ugly was included-- and then contrasting the beautiful, although doomed, against it.