Liz Taylor et Richard Burton: Les amants terribles

... among those real lives -- that were so publicly replete with drama, drink, drugs, fame, fortune, travel, stage & screen, luxury, lust, affairs, and marriages (whew!) -- the movie has an appeal.

Partly, as a chance to catch a slowed-down glimpse into just one period of their lives.

Mostly, though, to experience Helena Bonham Carter's sublime performance as well as that of Dominic West. Their voices and mannerisms were spot-on.

I read that Helena was terrified to play the part of Elizabeth Taylor (understandable). But it seems then that fear is her muse because she was, quite simply, remarkable.

I wonder if Hollywood could tap her again for another Liz movie. There's certainly enough material for a series...

It's 1983. Elizabeth Taylor (Helena Bonham Carter) and her twice ex-husband Richard Burton (Dominic West) are going to star in the revival of Noel Coward play 'Private Lives'. The media speculation is rampant with Taylor's help. She's popping pills. He keeps giving her notes on stage acting. He starts drinking again. The play is panned by the critics but popular with the fans who are rabid for the reunion. He marries his girlfriend and the two actors conflict.

It has a couple of good performances in a rather bland telling of a minor part of these icons' turbulent love affair. It's the writing and probably the directing that let this down. It plays more like a Lifetime TV movie. It doesn't have the bite. There is a great opportunity to add other characters into their relationship. This is begging to include Burton's girlfriend. There is great drama here but the movie doesn't take full advantage.

Burton and Taylor will forever be Hollywood's golden couple whose turbulent life made headline news but also inspired some dramatic films, none more so than 'Who's afraid of Virgina Woolf.'

The setting for this one off film is 1983, a year before Burton's untimely death.

Richard Burton (Dominic West) and Elizabeth Taylor (Helena Bonham Carter) after their second divorce are reuniting in London for a theatrical play of Noel Coward's Private Lives and enter another spiral of turbulence, bickering, despair and affection.

The press announcement creates a storm of interest and speculation in the media as to if they will get back together for a third time.

Taylor still carries a torch for Burton while Burton, a man with a reputation as a great stage actor is frustrated by Taylor's histrionics and her unwillingness to rehearse the play properly.

Bonham Carter captures the essence and cattiness of Taylor remarkably well although West seems to struggle with his Burton. Maybe it was a misstep by concentrating in this period of their relationship when there is a more interesting story to be told about this pair as to how they fell in love in the early 1960s. Together with their roller coaster relationship over the next 20 years.

Yup thanks to whoever thought of this. It clearly does not work however accurate the dialogue between them and the valiantly attempted body language was painfully unconvincing from two truly fine highly professional thespians who both strived to convince ?

Minutes prior to accessing this attempt i had for the first time, after all these years watched the truly fabulously produced, filmed and found myself mesmerized by them both in Cleopatra from 1963. As for this BBC attempt i noticed a modest reaction from viewers of a total of 10 not very impressive contributions ! Without having yet checked the number of contributions for Cleopatra, i am only guessing more than 50 minimum and i will check that true number of reactions later , ?

Short and sweet as possible, frankly this BBC attempt is not what i was hoping it would be .?

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were the cinema's official Golden Couple of the sixties. Even today, two years after Taylor's death and nearly thirty after Burton's, they still live on in the popular imagination as one of the most famous and glamorous couples of the twentieth century, outdone in that respect possibly only by John and Jackie Kennedy and King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. This film, made for the British TV channel BBC Four, does not tell the full story of their relationship (there is a great film to be made on that subject!) but concentrates on their last joint acting venture in 1983, seven years after the second of their two divorces.

The venture in question was a theatrical production in New York of Noel Coward's play "Private Lives", a production advertised under the slogan "Together Again!" On the one level, that slogan could be taken as a reference to Coward's principal characters Elyot and Amanda, a former husband and wife who meet several years after their divorce and realise that they still love one another. The theatre management obviously realised, however, that their advertisement could also be taken as referring to Burton and Taylor themselves, another former husband and wife meeting several years after their divorce. The production was not a great hit with the critics, but was very popular with the theatre-going public who loved the parallels between Elyot and Amanda and the actors portraying them. There was even a curious coincidence in the fact that Elyot's new wife in the play is named Sybil- the same name as Burton's first wife whom he left for Taylor

The fictitious Elyot and Amanda might end by rediscovering their love, but this does not quite happen to their real-life equivalents. Certainly, the film implies that Elizabeth Taylor was still very much in love with her ex-husband and was hoping to marry him for the third time. (If a second marriage can be described as the triumph of hope over experience, what does that say about a third marriage, especially a third marriage to the same party?) Burton, however, was less keen, partly because he had fallen in love with Sally Hay, who became his fourth wife (and does not appear in this film), and partly because the reunion with Taylor reminded him forcibly of just why they split up. By this stage of his life Burton, once one of Hollywood's most notorious hellraisers, was now recovering from alcoholism, whereas Taylor was still drinking as heavily as ever. The two clash repeatedly during the production, largely because Burton believes that Taylor is not taking the play seriously, deliberately overacting and playing to the gallery.

Making filmed biographies of the great actresses of the past, particularly those who were famed for their beauty, can often be a thankless task because of the difficulty of finding a modern actress who bears sufficient resemblance to the woman she is portraying. Helena Bonham Carter, although a very attractive woman, would probably not rank very highly in an Elizabeth Taylor lookalike contest. Her voice, mannerisms and gestures, however, are sufficient to convey an impression of Taylor's personality, an impression convincing enough to persuade us to overlook the lack of any real resemblance. (Michelle Williams was able to perform a similar feat with her impersonation of Marilyn Monroe in "My Week with Marilyn").

Dominic West, however, is unable to do the same for Richard Burton. Part of the reason is that he looks far too young. It is not just the disparity in their chronological ages; West is 44, whereas Burton would have been 58 in 1983. By this stage in his life Burton was ageing and in poor health, looking older than his 58 years. He may have fought gallantly to overcome his alcoholism, but years of excess had taken their toll, and he only had another year to live. (He was to die in August 1984). There is no real hint of this in West's performance, and he comes across as a healthy, vigorous and youthful-looking man in early middle age (despite a few grey hairs). It also does not help that he looks very different from Burton and lacks his deep, mellifluous voice.

I felt that "Burton & Taylor" would have been more interesting if it had tried to tell the whole Burton/Taylor story, using the "Private Lives" production as a framework and relating the story of their life together in a series of flashbacks. Perhaps BBC4 (a fairly small network) lacked the resources to try something so ambitious. The film we actually have, telling no more than a small postscript to that story, is too static and dominated by talk. The sight of Bonham Carter and West getting into yet another blazing argument may occasionally be entertaining, but we are left with the feeling that there must have been more to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor than that. 5/10