The Laureate (2023)

Nancy Nicholson (Laura Haddock), wife of Robert Graves (Tom Hughes), is a proponent of birth control. Nancy’s mother-in-law declares that “Birth control is nothing more than an incitement to promiscuity.”

She makes a good point, at least based on the evidence of The Laureate. This movie is more concerned with all the possible sexual combinations vis-a-vis the foursome of Robert, Nancy, Laura Riding (Dianna Agron), and Geoffrey Phibbs (Fra Fee) than with the lives and work of any of them.

Robert invites Laura, an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist, and short story writer, to spend some time at the country house – whose pastoral setting provides the only pleasure found in this film – that he shares with Nancy and their daughter, Catherine (Indica Watson).

Ostensibly, “Laura will serve as Catherine’s tutor and also collaborate with [Robert] on [his] next book,” and according to Laura herself, “I’ll make sure to spend time with both of them equally.” She certainly spends a lot of time with Robert, though not exactly “collaborating on his next book”; as for Catherine, Laura’s ‘tutoring’ is limited to almost convincing the girl to commit suicide by defenestration. I kid you not.

Very occasionally do we hear a verse of Graves’s poetry without ever having the slightest idea where it came from; did an angel just whisper it in his ear or what the hell?

Consider this: Robert hears a nightingale singing out of season (“They usually stop at the end of June”), and decides that “if a nightingale can sing in a cold autumn morning, with as much passion and sweetness as it does on a May night, then there is still hope for me.” Are we to believe that he came up with that rhapsodic imagery right there on the spot just from listening to some random bird?

I believe in inspiration (human, not divine), but the filmmakers forget that it must find you working. The movie never bothers to explore Graves’s creative process; thus, when Laura tells him “your writing is getting stronger, clearer”, this statement is totally meaningless because we have no point of comparison. Stronger and clearer than what, pray tell?

For that matter, how exactly is it “getting stronger, clearer”? To what do we owe this newfound strength and clarity? According to him, “I owe everything to Laura;“ this is an oddly vague statement from a man who had such heartfelt things to say about some stupid nightingale. What do you mean, "everything”?

Although Laura spends most – if not all – of her time seducing Robert and Nancy separately, somehow she and Robert manage to write and publish a book. Who knows; maybe they hired a ghost writer.

Meanwhile, the film shows even less interest (which is to say, zero) in Graves’s work as a translator; this is a pity considering “his versions of Lives of the Twelve Caesars and The Golden Ass remain popular for their clarity and entertaining style.” How ironic, that neither of those two qualities are anywhere to be found in 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.