THE LIBERTINE Special Screenings

First time filmmaker Laurence Dunmore crafts a deliciously dark portrait of London in the 1600s. Plague, rats and syphilis are as much a port of the landscape as the fog and the theatre. It is of course the characters that make up the heart of this story, though, and none is more roguishly charming than Depp’s Earl of Rochester.

The Earl of Rochester was friend and confidant of Charles II, as well as a Restorationera pornographer and poet. An anti-monarchist Royalist and atheist who converted to Christianity, the Earl’s cynicism is thrown for a loop when he falls in love with a struggling young actress played by Samantha Morton. John Malkovich turns in an inspired performance as the beleaguered monarch who is tormented by the Earl’s candor yet cannot ignore his gift for verse.

Proclaiming from the beginning that he is a character you will not like, the Earl does nothing to disprove this. He inflicts massive cruelties on his devoted wife and yet will come to the aid of a lowly street thief. His passion for drink is met only by his passion for excess. THE LIBERTINE is a portrait of a man astounded by the fact that he cannot find any limit to humanity’s depravity.