An interesting debut

Actor Rupert Everett makes his directorial debut in The Happy Prince, in which he also stars as Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde who, in his dying moments, looks back on his colourful and oftentimes dark life. Once the most famous man in London, a popular literary figure in Victorian society, Wilde also faced the wrath of said society. He experienced the heady highs and desperate lows of love, had a tumultuous relationship with his wife Constance, a solid friendship with Robbie Ross and was imprisoned for his love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. At the end of his days, Wilde travels across Europe, penniless and shunned by his peers. Yet, he is followed by a group of outlaws and urchins, to whom he tells the old stories all the while never losing the wonderful wit that fuelled his work. In 2009, German producer Jörg Schulze read an interview which Everett had given to the German magazine Spiegel in which the actor revealed that he was writing a script about the life of Oscar Wilde. Everett had already finished the script and was looking for ways to put the production together but was finding it difficult to finance the project from the UK alone, so Schulze offered to try to...