Dir. Oliver Parker 112mins. Empire Cinemas, Mar 11

In his third Wilde film adaptation, ‘Dorian Gray’ by director Oliver Parker focuses attention on the surface narrative of Wilde’s classic novel: Gray’s (Ben Barnes) ascent in London society on the arm of Lord Henry Wotton (Colin Firth) and his later descent into his own vanity, when sinisterly, he fails to age while a youthful portrait of himself in his attic turns into a painting of an elderly ogre. The film is particularly interesting when presenting Dorian as a Victorian out of time, pitching him against the Edwardian age, the era of cars and the suffrage movement. Barnes’s ability to handle his character’s strange psychological journey is limited: he’s upstaged by the painting itself, which doesn’t just age - it decays, putrefies with maggots and all.