Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Sven-Erik Palmbring A story that raises many questions, even good ones, but gives only a few answers. A great cast, James Wilby is for example excellent as Tony Last, goes to work in this beautifully filmed melodrama set in the early thirties i UK and Brazil. The period feeling is great and so are the settings. The story is built up around a doomed marriage, but it is hard to really understand why. There is a lot of smoke here but no real fire until the late and great Sir Alec Guiness comes to work in the last 30 minutes creating a frightening illiterate fan of Charles Dickens. But superb acting on all hands and high class camera-work is not enough although the film is worth watching especially if you have a love for British culture and history, and don't we all...

mark.waltz With the smash hit of "Downton Abbey" on BBC and American PBS channels, audiences should take a re-visit to the popular Merchant Ivory films of the last 20 years of the 20th Century. While this isn't from Merchant Ivory, it definitely has its feel, and features two British actors who won the hearts of millions of gay men in the romantic drama "Maurice", a daring look at homosexuality in early 20th Century England. Now, the two actors (James Wilby and Rupert Graves) are playing heterosexual men both involved with the same women (Kristen Scott Thomas) and equally offending the morals of that day. The two men are of different social circles, but strike up an acquaintanceship which ends up with Thomas falling into bed with Graves while married to Wilby. Apparently boring in the bedroom (even though they produced a son), Wilby is quite different in his male social circle, which shows the values of the day. The charming Graves (who also appeared in Merchant Ivory's extremely popular "A Room With a View") wins the wife, but the social structure of post-Victorian England won't keep her comfortable. After tragedy strikes and the married couple go their separate ways, Wilby heads to South America where he encounters an eccentric recluse (Sir Alec Guennis) who appears to be unwilling to let Wilby try and return home to take care of business as usual. The result is the destruction of his ex-wife as his estate is destroyed by his absence.A lavish and appropriately slow moving drama of how fate sometimes steps in to punish us for our transgressions, "A Handful of Dust" is a well-acted drama that is deeply affecting in its irony and comments on the social morality of its day. Beautifully detailed in every aspect, it manages to keep you mesmerized even with a mood that reminds me of a beautiful brook in a meadow that just flows, taking its time, yet never slowly evaporating. The three leading actors are all very good, playing their roles so naturally that it does not appear like they are acting at all. Anjelica Huston has a small role as a guest at the fox hunt where tragedy intervenes, while Judi Dench adds subtlety as Graves' mother. Years before American audiences really pulled her into their mainstream hearts, the British theatre goers already knew her for the incredible talent she was.

pbellarbutus If this is an example of Waugh's writing, remind me never to see or read any more. That so many truly excellent actors and actresses could not even with their combined talents lift this dreary, confusing, morbid and maddening tale out of the mire is surely reason enough for any discerning person to give it a miss.I have tried to find any redeeming features in this depressing story, and failed miserably; indeed, that this author has attained a certain prominence in English literature, I find quite frankly astounding, however I will freely admit this is my first acquaintance with Waugh's work, and perhaps not his best work. Unfortunately after seeing "A Handful of Dust", I will probably never know.

kevino-4 but well worth the time. The actors are perfection while the story is allowed to tell itself with crushing realism. This isn't a movie that is going to make you smile much but it will probably make you think.