‘Angels & Insects’ By Rita Kempley Washington Post Staff Writer February 16, 1996

Director: Philip Haas; Cast: Mark Rylance; Jeremy Kemp; Patsy Kensit; Douglas Henshall; Kristin Scott Thomas; Annette Badland Not rated Compare prices for this movie Find local video stores More movie shopping Save money with NextCard Visa

Adapted from A.S. Byatt's novella "Morpho Eugenia," this gaudy, Gothic melodrama leads its impoverished protagonist, William Adamson (Mark Rylance), down the garden path trod by countless fictional governesses. After 10 years in the jungles of the Amazon, the English naturalist loses all his specimens when shipwrecked on the voyage home. He gratefully accepts the patronage of the wealthy Rev. Harald Alabaster (Jeremy Kemp), an amateur naturalist who invites William to stay at his vast estate.

Arriving in time for the Albasters' annual ball, William finds himself surrounded by the local beauties in their shimmering gowns of ruby red, orange vermilion and gentian blue. They flutter like outsize butterflies, alighting from time to time on the edge of a chair for a sip of sherry, a rest or a chat.

Eugenia (Patsy Kensit), Alabaster's eldest daughter, is the brightest of them all, and William, drab as a moth in dress and personality, is helplessly drawn to her golden flame. Incredibly, his modest courtship leads to marriage and a brood of alabaster babies. But something isn't cricket. A fan of Darwin's newly published theories, William finds it odd that the infants look nothing whatsoever like his side of the family.

The young scientist begins to feel increasingly out of his element when obliged to socialize with his witless in-laws, especially his hostile brother-in-law, Edgar (Douglas Henshall), a skirt-chasing snob with a fondness for the hunt. When Eugenia mysteriously withdraws her affections, William returns to a study of ants he has undertaken with governess Matty Crompton (Kristin Scott Thomas). He is comforted by this fellow moth's honesty, encouragement and ironic wit. And, yes, her obsession with the hidden world beneath their feet.

The analogy between the ant colony under William's scrutiny and the Alabaster family couldn't be any clearer if director Philip Haas put up a neon sign. Lady Alabaster (Annette Badland), too plump to waddle and deathly pale, is the ant queen, just as Eugenia and her siblings are her larval offspring.

While ants still honor and serve their aristocracy, the ruling class was declining even as William wed Eugenia. Darwin's "Origin of the Species" led literate Englishmen and women to question the divine right of kings and those they had empowered. Thus, the working-class William is portrayed as the true gentleman, and the well-bred Edgar as a perverted ne'er-do-well.

Haas, who collaborated on the screenplay with his editor wife, Belinda, previously directed the problematic psychodrama "The Music of Chance" and a series of 10 documentaries on modern artists, and he brings a painterly eye to this moving canvas. "Angels & Insects" reveals nothing new about the kinky conflicts of the Victorians, but it does so in a fabulous gilded frame.

Angels & Insects is unrated but contains explicit sex and frontal male nudity.

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