Angels and Insects Movie Review

We know that something's off from the very beginning of Angels and Insects; Paul Brown's surreal costumes are a dead give away. In spite of or, perhaps, because of them, William Adamson (Mark Rylance) determines to marry Eugenia (Patsy Kensit). Eugenia is lovely, but vague. There's something wrong with the marriage from the start, and William isn't even close to solving the riddle when one day he receives a message to return home early and realizes, in an empirical flash, exactly why Eugenia has distanced herself from him for so long. Then Kristin Scott Thomas (made up to look severe and efficient, but secretly lusting for William all this time) makes HER move. Writer/director Philip Haas and co-scripter Belinda Haas succeed in drawing us into a weird and disturbing climate. (I'm trying to come up with a picture that revolves around insects where the central characters were quite normal, but I'm drawing a blank here.) Based on A.S. Byatt's novella Morpho Eugenia .

1995 (R) 116m/C GB Mark Rylance, Patsy Kensit, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jeremy Kemp, Douglas Hen-shall, Chris Larkin, Annette Badland, Anna Massey, Saskia Wickham; D: Philip Haas; W: Belinda Haas, Philip Haas; C: Bernard Zitzermann; M: Alexander Balanescu. Nominations: Academy Awards ‘96: Best Costume Design. VHS