_Carrington_ reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs "If only I weren't so... plural!" This exasperated and completely enchanting self-description by painter Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson, stammering and scrunching her shoulders in that charming way she has) denotes not only the character's scope and intensity, but also the ambitiousness of Christopher Hampton's film biography. Much like its protagonist, the movie is affectionate, grand, fidgety, unruly, difficult - in a word, "plural" - but it's also caught up in a familiar bind, the necessity of conveying even a hint of her (obvious) complexity in about two hours. Hampton attempts to solve this problem by dividing Carrington's life into chapters, six of them, each titled to designate a particular influence and time period, such as "Partridge 1918-1921" (the name of her husband, Ralph Partridge) or "Ham Spray House 1924-1931" (the name of one of her residences). This provides a useful chronology, establishing some order for her emotional ups and downs, her various relationships, and her continuing efforts to make sense of herself. At the same time, this strategy necessarily has to leave out events and explanations, so that the portrait is occasionally cryptic, depending on your grasp of Bloomsbury history in order to understand exactly what's going on. There's not much attention here to Dora Carrington's work as an artist, for instance, except her declaration at one point that she doesn't paint for exhibition. Yet she lives well, in that jodhpur-wearing way (a tension that the movie doesn't explore, her dislike for the wealthy classes generally, and her own class status). As the film's focus, Carrington's "plural" nature is appropriately fascinating, especially to those characters surrounding her, who persistently try to "figure her out." She's introduced to us as she's first spotted by writer Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce). He watches her through a window as she plays ball with a couple of children, mistaking her for a "ravishing boy." Though he's clearly disappointed by the fact that she's a girl (when they meet he turns away, attending to a book he finds on a nearby shelf), it's also clear that he's quite taken with her, though he's a self-identified "homosexual." As the film works to show experiences outside of typical categories, it seems also to be dealing in pre-categories, as Carrington is making choices she doesn't know she has (an attitude stemming from her sense of class privilege). As Carrington and Strachey's romance which is not a romance takes place during and after World War I, in and out of London, there are certain social pressures brought to bear. The extent of these pressures, however, is less than clear (though Strachey suffers one abusive episode from a jealous friend, generally "their circle" seems unworried that he's what they call a "bugger"). Hanging with the literary sophisticates in 1920s and 1930s London, Lytton and Carrington have some room to imagine living and loving arrangements that seem, ironically, less possible now. Their relationship is jumpstarted when Strachey is asked by a friend, Mark, to "spend time" with Carrington, to convince her that he's a great painter, so she should give up her stubborn virginity. News of Lytton's assignment spreads quickly in their "circle." He's asked, "How's the campaign, the Carrington matter?" This "matter" becomes decidedly more convoluted when he gets the job done and she does agree to sleep with Mark (who's a lousy lover as well as self-absorbed, no surprise). Afterwards, she and Lytton move in together, though they will remain passionate "friends," not lovers. As they discuss this unusual plan, he wonders aloud, "What do you think we ought to do about the physical?" The film shows the ways they found to circumvent and renegotiate the "physical," falling in love with the same Major Partridge (Steven Waddington), allowing that they do sleep with other people but remaining constant in their devotion to one another. Representing "the physical" as both an inconvenient, socially determined requirement for recognizable relationships, but also a kind of fundamental force driving Carrington and Strachey to improvise in their commitment to each other, the movie fidgets its way toward its inevitably sad conclusion. Cynthia Fuchs teaches film/media studies and is coordinator of the queer studies project at George Mason University. Copyright by Cynthia Fuchs. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author. This review originally appeared in the Philadelphia _City Paper_.