Prick Up Your Ears

Gary Oldman’s superb livewire performance is now virtually an authentic testament of the man himself. Alfred Molina’s morose, self-hating Halliwell is also utterly convincing: Bennett’s script cleverly conveys their long years of bickering domesticity.

Fresh from portraying another counterculture icon in Alex Cox’s Sid And Nancy, the 29-year-old Oldman could hardly have been better cast as the cocksure genius whose saucy farces turned the West End stage on its ear.

The script is witty, the direction fluid, with one of the homosexual orgy scenes in a public toilet almost balletic, and the depiction of the lovers’ life in their flat suitably claustrophobic. Gary Oldman is excellent as Orton, right down to remarkable resemblance, while Alfred Molina creates both an amusing and tormented Halliwell. Vanessa Redgrave takes top honors, though, as a compassionate and benign agent.

Like Casablanca, Diva, Clockwork Orange and countless other quality-cult films, Prick Up Your Ears has an indefinable idiosyncrasy that makes you want to come back for more.

As a portrait of a relationship and a creative partnership, Prick is ever alert to the shifts in power, to the narcissistic wounds that can never be salved when a teacher is surpassed by his pupil.

The film is honest and watchable. But, unlike Orton, it takes no real delight in misbehaving.

The film covers the main events of the Orton life in a manner that is nothing less than distracted. One has little understanding of the fatal intensity - and need - that kept Orton and Halliwell together.