Relationship Spotlight: Adam Fenwick-Symes & Nina Blount (Bright Young Things)

I’d say this is a relationship (based on the movie – haven’t read the original novel) that, more than anything, is just interesting.  While Nina and Adam certainly have their moments, they’re both too immature through much of the film to really constitute any sort of epic love story.  But like I said, they’re interesting to me, two people who genuinely care about each other but can’t get their respective acts together long enough to make it work.  (Adam/Nina-related spoilers.)

Like the other bright young things, Adam and Nina live almost entirely in the moment.  They sometimes seem to exist party to party, and the combination of youth, disposable income (that may or may not be, in fact, actual,) and no responsibilities is a potent one.  They forever pitch themselves between dizzying heights and wretched lows.  Adam, for instance, is always either flush with cash (sometimes remarkably so) or utterly penniless, a state that can shift in minutes, and as such, he’s either triumphant or despondent most of the time.  Since the culmination of his engagement to Nina hinges on his being able to provide for her, this means that Adam and Nina are generally on the brink of the altar or destined never to marry at all, with nothing in between.

It’s hard for any relationship to withstand that much drama, and Nina and Adam really aren’t equipped to handle it.  As Adam vacillates wildly between infinite wealth and abject poverty, Nina grows restless.  She’s not used to waiting for anything – the nightly parties they attend are all about instant gratification – and it’s easy to see why Adam wouldn’t instill confidence.  Although she likes him better than any other man she’s gone with, she can’t rely on him, and her itchy feet start edging toward greener pastures.  And, naturally, they fall out just as passionately and inconsistently as they get on together; one minute they’re vowing it’s absolutely definitely the end, and the next they’re orbiting one another again, getting ever closer to each other.

When they are together, though, and when they’re not careening between success and crisis, I like them a lot.  Considering the high drama that follows them and the frenzy of their nightlife, they can be surprisingly contented when it’s just them.  They’re wonderfully sweet sitting in the back of a hired car, realizing they haven’t actually figured out where they want to go, and I love the scene where Adam, again thinking he’s come into enough money to marry Nina, is dancing elatedly around her flat and she just stands off to the side watching him.  Similarly, I like how they tend to find their own little corner at parties, enjoying the revel but ultimately enjoying each other more.  If they could tap into that easy companionability a little more and chase histrionics a little less, they could save themselves a great deal of time and emotional upheaval.

One of my favorite moments of theirs isn’t even altogether happy, but I like it because it beautiful illustrates Nina’s feelings when we get Adam’s far more often.  During one of Adam’s roller coaster acquisition-and-loss-of-wealth sessions, he’s rung her once to say they can’t get married, again to say the wedding’s back on, and a third time to say they can’t get married after all.  Since they’re on the phone, Adam of course can’t see her, and her ultimate reply is detached and breezy, but there’s the slightest pause before she says, “Adam, you bore, why not?” and you can feel in that moment how devastated she is, how she needs that second to assume the indifferent air required to cover her sadness.  And that, I think, is Nina and Adam in a nutshell.  They both love each other and want to be together, but somehow, they keep just missing each other, unable to make it to the same page.

Bright Young Things (2003, R)

 

This is a movie I’ve loved for years.  Not only is it cleverly written and stylishly directed by Stephen Fry, but it also introduced me to fine British actors such as Michael Sheen, Fenella Woolgar, and Stephen Campbell Moore.  Jammed with talent and excellently blending satire with drama, it’s one I deeply enjoy every time I see it.

 

Based on Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, Bright Young Things dizzily follows the lives a group of wealthy young revelers in 1930s London.  Chief among them is Adam, who’s been living it up beyond his means and is in desperate need of cash.  He’s already spent the advance on the novel he’s writing, and when he loses the manuscript, he finds himself in a tight spot.  In hopes of earning enough money to marry his fiancée Nina, he takes a job as a gossip columnist writing about the sensational exploits of the rich and irresponsible, ie, his social circle.

 

It’s a difficult film to summarize because it’s pretty meandering – in a good way, though.  It twists and tilts like an amusement-park ride, as chaotic as it is exciting.  Adam is forever careening between elation and despair, squandering money in the time it takes him to call Nina with the happy news that he’s gained it.  He, Nina, and their friends (particularly the flamboyant Miles and the eccentric Agatha) spend their nights chasing a good time and their days trying to pass the time until sundown.  Their parties are a hectic jumble of music, drugs, costumes, sex, food, alcohol, and all-around excess, and the film really captures this sense of rudderless indulgence.

 

But of course, it’s not all partying all the time.  The newspaper is only in need of a new gossip columnist because of a scandal involving a post-dance tragedy, and just like Adam, the giddy highs of the “bright young things” are matched by the crushing lows.  The lives of the young people swirl with love and money woes, trouble with parents and the law, and a dangerous tendency to lose themselves in the madness.  As the characters are pitched, tossed, and hoisted by their own petards, you root for them to stay afloat.

 

For acting, I’ll start with those I mentioned above.  Stephen Campbell Moore (who made his film debut here) anchors the movie with his performance as Adam, equal parts humorous and earnest.  As Miles, Michael Sheen is outrageous, arch, and bearing absolutely no resemblance to his Tony Blair in The Queen.  Agatha is played with imminently-watchable panache by Fenella Woolgar (Agatha Christie from Doctor Who’s “The Unicorn and the Wasp.”)  The film also features James McAvoy, David Tennant, Emily Mortimer (who I later loved in Lars and the Real Girl,) Simon Callow (Charles Dickens from Who’s “The Unquiet Dead,”) Jim Broadbent, and a hilarious Peter O’Toole, plus non-Brits Dan Aykroyd and Stockard Channing.  And that’s just those whose parts are large enough to mention.  Jammed.  With.  Talent!

 

Warnings

 

Sexual content, lots of substance abuse (including smoking, drinking, and drug use,) and language.