Dorian Gray

What it's about:

Fresh-faced and innocent, Dorian Gray arrives in London to move into the house he has inherited. Almost immediately he falls under the influence of amoral and calculating Lord Henry Wotton, leading to a life of increasing debauchery and even violence. Through many years Gray stays as young-looking as ever, while a portrait painted when he arrived grows old, reflecting his increasing excesses. Eventually the picture, now secreted in his attic, becomes almost hideous to behold. When true love finally enters his life he realises he must guard his secret at all costs.

What the critics thought:

"Some neat formal flourishes from its director Oliver Parker and a truly handsome supporting turn from Colin Firth, this story demands a more versatile and charismatic central player than the powerfully blank Ben Barnes."
- Kevin Maher, The Times

"Beyond mildly risqué bisexual assignations, the filmmaking isn’t terribly adventurous, but cinematographer Roger Pratt gives it an inky opulence, and it’s quite watchable."
- Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

"Depravity is better suggested than made explicit when it becomes vulgar, pornographic or comic, and possibly all three."
- Philip French, The Observer