Sinful Sunday: The Perilous, Patrician Beauty of Bosie
Jude Law gives a remarkably layered, and piercing, performance as Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde's greatest love...and his doom.
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Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.
I remember watching the 1997 film Wilde over a decade ago and being struck by Stephen Fry’s remarkable and haunting performance as the title character. Here, I thought, was the perfect meeting of role and actor. Just as striking, however, was Jude Law’s interpretation of Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas), Wilde’s beloved and, eventually, the source of his downfall. It’s the kind of role that Law was seemingly born to play: privileged, patrician, petulant and, obviously, devastatingly beautiful.
There’s something perilous and patrician about Jude Law’s physical beauty–with his blonde hair, his pitless blue eyes, and the lips that are just this side of pouty–and it’s clear that there’s crackling chemistry between him and Stephen Fry. Of course, this is hardly surprising, since Law has always been sex on legs. And yet, at the same time, there’s always been something a little menacing about him too, a sense that there are claws beneath his silky exterior, just waiting for the chance to rake your flesh and your soul (be brings some of this to bear in The Talented Mr. Ripley, too). This volatile mixture matches perfectly with the dangerous desire that flares between Oscar and Bosie from the moment their eyes meet across a crowded room. It’s not a meet-cute, exactly, but it’s nevertheless a striking cinematic moment, as the very screen seems to crackle and seethe with queer desire.
At first it seems as if the two have really managed to find their other halves. As Robbie Ross–played by a sensitive and soulful Michael Sheen–says to one of Wilde’s other cast-offs, Wilde has been smitten with several young men, but he’s never really been in love until now. Their every scene together, whether it’s the halls of Oxford or in bed, is charged with sexual energy. When you watch Bosie gazing at Oscar across a flat filled with his fellow Oxford students while he sings a song of longing, you can positively feel the spell he’s slowly weaving, around both Oscar and, perhaps despite his own intentions, himself. For all of its flaws and all of the tragedy that is soon to overcome the two of them, it’s impossible not to feel that here, indeed, is one of the great love stories of the ages.
One can hardly blame Oscar, then, for falling head over heels with this brat prince, even as we (and, I think, he) are aware that he’s playing a very dangerous game. I think it’s safe to say that there’s something broken inside this young nobleman, some pit of spite that he can never outrun, no matter how hard he tries. Perhaps it’s the consequence of being a queer man in a deeply homophobic world, or perhaps it’s the fact that his father, played by a sneering and blustering Tom Wilkinson, is so transparently violent or abusive. Whatever the case, he’s a vindictive little shit at times, and Law plays him to the hilt.
Indeed, as the film goes Oscar’s love for Bosie proves to be something of a poisoned chalice. Boise is the quintessential spoiled aristocrat, prone to tantrums and to whining when he doesn’t get what he wants. He also possesses a subtle and remarkably effective cruelty, and he takes an especial delight in mocking Oscar’s middle-class position, so sharply at odds with the refined attitude that he takes in both his plays and his everyday life. Like so many of his class, Bosie wants all of the things that money–particularly Oscar’s–can bring him, without really thinking about where such money is to come from or how it is to be made. One also gets the sense that the allure of Oscar Wilde is precisely that he is beneath Bosie’s only social class. If there’s one thing that the younger man seems to enjoy it’s power, and he wields it an often malicious intent.
Boise is, in other words, the ultimate queer narcissist. Everything and everyone is viewed through how they can be of use to him, whether that be his friends and lovers that he wines and dines on Oscar’s dime or Oscar himself. He is so absorbed by his own desires and yearnings that there’s no chance that anyone, even the great Oscar Wilde could ever break through and produce anything even remotely resembling genuine human love or affection.
Even after Oscar has been imprisoned and sentenced to hard labor, Bosie finds it impossible to ever think outside of himself, his interests, and his ongoing yearning to rebel against his tyrannical father. Not even Wilde’s pale features from inside the prison are capable of breaking Bosie out of his self-indulgent attitude, and he is ultimately more upset that he isn’t going to be allowed to testify than he is at the fact that his beloved is going to be sentenced to a prison term that could spell the end of his life. It’s a tragic irony that the one person who seems to bring Oscar so much joy is also the person who is responsible for his downfall and the prison sentence that will weaken him so thoroughly that he dies at the young age of 46.
In a final conversation with Sheen’s Robbie Ross, Bosie makes it clear that he is going to seek out Oscar after his liberation. However, while he might say that he loves Oscar, one gets the distinct impression that it’s more accurate that he loves what Oscar represents: a certain sophistication and sly intelligence that he notably lacks in himself; the opportunity to strike back at his father and the tyrannical and homophobic society he represents; perhaps even a goodness and generosity of spirit that is at odds with his own inner darkness. For all that Wilde positions itself as a hybrid of biopic and romance–and, as a result, encourages us to want to see these two men end up together in the end–one also can’t help but wonder whether that’s such a good thing. And, as it turns out, even their reunion is doomed to be temporary; while it ends with them reuniting in Italy, the note afterward points out that they parted ways shortly thereafter.
So much for happy endings.
What, in the final analysis, are we to make of Bosie? I think the brilliance of Wilde lies not only in its ability to shed such fascinating light on Oscar Wilde but also on the man who was his downfall. The brilliance of Jude Law’s performance lies at least in part in his ability to make Bosie into something more than just a caricature or a melodramatic villain. For all of his caprice and his cruelty, there’s still a soul in there, and one can’t help but feel at least a bit of pity for him, particularly when one sees what kind of parents raised him (Gemma Jones is suitably icy as his mother). Though he might have been cushioned by some of the world’s ills because of his social class, there’s no way he could escape the corrosive and toxic impact of a world that saw homosexuality as at worst a grave sin and at best an illness.
Bosie is a haunting specter. Unlike Oscar, he has become the epitome of the spoiled queer (he even gets his own chapter in a book called Bad Gays!) Even so, he is still a fascinating figure in his own right, and he is a disturbing reminder of how homophobia can twist and distort a person until, in the end, they become the sort of queer monster everyone expects them to be.