The Angelic Conversation Details

Shakespeare in love

It was difficult to concentrate on Judy Dench's mistressful readings of Shakespeare because, not only were the images very painterly and watchable but they were also extremely homosexual, and Derek Jarman's long lingering takes on his boys' faces, bodies and kisses didn't appeal to this old heterosexual warhorse as it might have done to a more prurient gay guy. Nevertheless the Francis bacon style slo mo's suggests a good painter in the director whose other films I love. Jarman must have concluded that Shakespeare was gay as do so many other academics, and so interpreted the sonnets in the best way he knew how.

[Highly rated reviewer]

A very beautiful film

When I was younger, Derek Jarman's films used to baffle and annoy me. This, and 'The last of England', had me running screaming from the cinema in frustration at what I perceived was his pretentiousness and preciousness.

Seen again, however, 'The angelic conversation' now looks like a rather wonderful piece of work, beautiful, mysterious, artistic and artful, a skewed (queer) love story played out to Judi Dench's breathy readings of some of Shakespeare's sonnets and excerpts from others.

It's a film which demands your attention, and needs re-watching before any sort of shape emerges, but it repays both. A painterly, very English film, and something like the quintessence of cinema, even if, at times, it resembles ambient film rather too much.