Rowing with the Wind

The almost unrecognizably young faces of Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley staring out from the video box is all the explanation one needs as to why Miramax decided to release this 1987 chatty 'thriller' from director Gonzalo Suárez. The film recounts the friendship between Lord Byron (Hugh Grant), and Percy (Valentine Pelky) and Mary Shelley (Lizzy McInnerny) during the period in which the latter penned Frankenstein. The threesome, along with Byron's squeeze Claire Clairemont (Elizabeth Hurley), lounge around Europe discussing their art, philosophies, and romantic frustrations without managing to say a single thing of interest. When writer-director Suárez feels that he may just be boring the viewer with all this talk (his threshold for boredom is decidedly higher than mine), he trots out an incarnation of Shelley's monster for no other reason than to introduce a plot complication--which the others quickly take up as a subject for more conversation. The film proceeds in this manner for roughly two hours, and then ends. While I can't say who had the idea first, the subject matter here was covered much more interestingly, if not necessarily better, by Ken Russell the year earlier in his Gothic (1986), and then again the same year as Haunted Summer (1987), from Stalin director Ivan Passer. Not recommended. (S. C. Sickles)