Product: Beau Brummell - This Charming Man (2006)
Rating: 4.0
Good but could have been so much more
(Spoilers ahead) I was just so overjoyed that someone spent some time to make a film based on "the Beau" that was not some cinematic concoction!The film gives the major elements of Beau Brummell's life: his vanity and cockiness, his influence on the Prince Regent (played by Hugh Bonneville, now known for his role in "Downton Abbey" as the amiable Earl of Grantham) and on men's fashion, credited with getting men out of knee breeches in into trousers. We see him preen and see the pursuit of the bailiffs who come to take payment of his extravagances. We see how his familiarity with the Prince Regent has a limit, and his wit finally oversteps its boundaries, leading to his social demise. The film infers that Brummell was also a lover of Lord Byron as well as courtesan Julia Johnstone, in a brief menage a trois.What we don't see is the sad end of this man, his dying in a charity house of tertiary syphilis. There was not too much displaying his well-known caustic wit that would no doubt render the film character unlikeable. There is not even a hint at the real end of the man. The audience is robbed of a conclusion. Maybe the director's vision was a feel-good movie, as upbeat as the catchy film soundtrack. Those not familiar with Brummell's life presume he skipped off to Paris to escape his debts and lived in obscurity. The truth is much less candy-coated.James Purefoy makes an admirable Beau, far too confident for his own good. The costuming is well-done and the scene of the Beau's toilette for the Prince and his cronies is hilarious.I highly suggest reading the engaging and thorough biography written by actor Ian Kelly, "Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Man of Style," on which the film is loosely based. It is well researched and makes no sweeping, unfounded assumptions about the life of Beau Brummell. It is interesting to note that Mr. Kelly had a minor role in this film as one of the Beau's "body dandiacal."