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THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED While not the official world Premiere the new feature film from Richard Wolstencroft is to play MUFF 2008. Based on the novel by F.Scott Fitzgerald, the story follows playboy trust fund kid Anthony Patch as he traverses one drug fuelled party to the next, screwing whoever he wants along the way. Into his life comes Gloria Gilbert, glamorous party gal, and Yin to his Yang. Anthony falls for the bossy Gloria and the two are married, and are just biding their time until Anthony’s multi millionaire grandfather Adam Patch (Norman Yemm) passes on, to inherit his fortune. In the meantime they party hard. As the parties become more and more decadent, a darkness seems to intrude on the happy couple from all sides. Things come to a head when Adam Patch who has being trying to encourage his grandson to find proper work, walks in on a drug orgy of his grandson, at their rented country estate. Patch Snr then promptly disinherits his grandson and dies, leaving Anthony’s life to spiral out of control in a blizzard of drugs, sex and violence. The third feature, (forth if you include The Intruder, for Wolstencroft) The Beautiful and Damned paints a damning portrait of 21st century decadent nihilism and the emptiness of the party that never ends... until it does. The first modern setting adaptation of Fitzgerald ever attempted, the Beautiful and Dsamned moves the novel from New York in the 1920’s to 00’s Melbourne yet still captures the heart and message of Fitzgerald’s brilliant sophomore novel. The Beautiful and Damned is young, hip, dark and dangerous. It is a zeitgeist film drawing on the dark star energies of Bret Easton Ellis, the obsession with wealth and status in contemporary society, that is more rampant now than even in the 80’s. Along with David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Beautiful and Damned gives us a Fitzgerald for the 21st century. Don’t miss this special MUFF sneak peak before the film plays overseas film festivals. The Beautiful and Damned is part one of a proposed trilogy of modernist adaptations Wolstencroft is planning.
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