The Laureate

Struggling writer Robert Graves (Tom Hughes), his wife Nancy (Laura Haddock) and daughter Catherine (Indica Watson) move to a remote Oxfordshire home where they hope he can find some inspiration (and money!). It's whilst there that they read a poem from American author Laura Riding (Dianna Agron) and decide that they ought invite her over to stay for a while. Over she comes and what now ensues is an illustration of their much publicised menage-à-trois that also draws in the somewhat hapless Geoffrey Phibbs (Fra Fee) before heading for a denouement that is going to shake things up considerably! This film looks good, but none of the performances catch fire. Hughes is adequate and actually rather looks the part but neither Haddock nor Agron really raise their game enough to imbue this with any of the passion that this story must have generated at the time. It has a sterility to it which makes it rather self-indulgent at times, and I felt the whole thing a really rather lacklustre and wordy interpretation of the lives of three people that shook society, morals and the literary world. It will look fine on the television, so I wouldn't bother going to a cinema to watch it.