Goode & Whishaw to Revisit "Brideshead"

Here come the "Brides"-heads. Ben Whishaw (left) and Matthew Goode.

Attention Brit-o-philes! That landmark tale of suppressed (or not) love among the upper crust, of young men at Oxford who drink too much, flounce around and kind of sort of fall in love is coming back. Yes, Evelyn Waugh's classic Brideshead Revisited, the subject of a famous and lavish and gay-beloved British TV mini-series back in 1981 (it was shown on PBS here in the U.S.) is getting a big-screen treatment. And this version has already got a smashingly queer pedigree.

Directing the film is Julian Jarrold, who directed last year's Kinky Boots (which featured gayness and drag queens) and the soon-to-arrive Becoming Jane (with gay fave Anne Hathaway as a young Jane Austen). The screenplay for BR is co-written by Andrew Davies (who scripted The Line of Beauty, recently shown on Logo, as well as the lesbian mini-series Tipping the Velvet and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) who also knows his way around a pent-up gay tale.

And the young male leads? Super-dashing and handsome Matthew Goode, seen in Match Point, Imagine Me & You and Chasing Liberty, will play Charles Ryder, the young student who becomes involved in the life of a damaged, hedonistic aristocratic family -- especially their decadent son, Sebastian. Back in 1981 Jeremy Irons played the role of Charles, which was sort of his big break-out moment.

Playing opposite Goode will be Ben Whishaw, seen last year in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and who's also one of the Bob Dylans in Todd Haynes upcoming I'm Not There. Whishaw will play the teddy-bear hugging, hard-drinking, somewhat fey aesthete Sebastian Flyte who captures Charles' (Matthew Goode's) attention.

More upper-crusty details after the jump...

Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews get close as Brideshead's Charles and Sebastian in 1981.

Also on board to play the female lead, Sebastian's sister Julia (who becomes embroiled in the boys' relationship) is Hayley Atwell, whom you might have seen on Logo in The Line of Beauty, playing the sensitive, volatile sister Cat.

Looks like this is all set to be quite a splashy, rich adaptation. The 1981 version also boasted killer (and somewhat hilarious) turns by John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier. And the story does feature a very, very gay character: the boys' Oxford schoolmate Anthony Blanche, a boozy dandy who is known as quite the seductress of his classmates.

Watch this video to get an idea of the delirious devotion that this very sensitive TV-movie received from gays back in the day. This was, like, the Brokeback Mountain of its time.

More on this to come... Get your natty tweeds ready.
And your teddy bear.

Comments

[JP]

Blimey!

[Suzette]

Thanks a lot for this blog.

If you want to find out more about Matthew Goode. Just click on the address I added.

Hope you don't mind but I've added this blog to my page about Brideshead Revisited.

Thanks again

Suzette