The film opens with Oscar Wilde's (Stephen Fry) 1882 visit to Leadville, Colorado during his lecture tour of the United States. Despite his flamboyant personality and urbane wit, he proves to be a success with the silver miners as he regales them with tales of Renaissance silversmith Benvenuto Cellini.
Wilde returns to London and weds Constance Lloyd (Jennifer Ehle), and they have two sons in quick succession. While the second child is still an infant, the Wildes are playing host to young Canadian Robbie Ross (Michael Sheen), who seduces Oscar and helps him come to terms with his homosexuality. On the opening night of his play "Lady Windermere's Fan", Wilde is re-introduced to the dashingly handsome and openly foppish poet Lord Alfred Douglas (Jude Law), whom he had met briefly the year before, and the two fall into a passionate relationship. Hedonistic Alfred is not content to remain monogamous and frequently engages in sexual activity with rent boys while his older lover plays the role of voyeur. Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensbury (Tom Wilkinson), objects to his son's relationship with Wilde.
Marquess of Queensberry: Where d'you stand on cremation?
Wilde: I'm not sure I have a position.
Marquess of Queensberry: I'm for it. I wrote a poem about it. "When I am dead, cremate me." That's how it starts. 'When... I am dead... cremate me". Whaddya think of that for an opening line?
Wilde: It's... challenging.
Douglas: (Wilde is ill in bed) You look such an idiot lying there. Revolting. Have you forgotten how to wash?
Wilde: As a matter of fact, I'm dying for a glass of water
Douglas: Well, help yourself. You know where the jug is.
Wilde: Bosie, darling...
Douglas: It stinks in here. You'll be wanting me to empty your chamber pot next.
Wilde: Well, I emptied your chamber pot... I looked after you...
Douglas: Well, I'm not looking after you. Not now. You don't interest me, not when you're ill. You're just a boring, middle-aged man with a blocked-up nose.
Wilde: Bosie, dearest boy...
Douglas: Shut up! Dearest boy! Darling Bosie! It doesn't mean anything! You don't love me! The only person you've ever loved is yourself. You like me, you lust after me, you go about with me because I've got a title. That's all. You like to write about Dukes and Duchesses, but you know nothing about them. You're the biggest snob I've ever met, and you think you're so daring because you f**k the occasional boy.
Wilde: Bosie, please... You're killing me...
Douglas: You just about do when you're at your best. You're amusing, very amusing, but when you're not at your best, you're no one!
Wilde: All I asked for was a glass of water...
Carson: In this poem by Lord Alfred Douglas, "Two Loves", there is one love, true love, which, and I quote "fills the hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame." And there is another: "I am the love that dare not speak its name." Was that poem explained to you?
Wilde: I think it's clear.
Carson: There's no question as to what it means?
Wilde: Most certainly not.
Carson: So, is it not clear that the love described relates to natural and unnatural love?
Wilde: No.
Carson: Oh. Then what is 'the love that dare not speak its name?'
Wilde: "The love that dare not speak its name", in this century, is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Johnathan. Such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you may find in the sonnets of Michelangelo or Shakespeare. It is, in this century, misunderstood. So much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name", and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful. It is fine. It is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual. And it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man when the elder has intellect and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts someone in the pillory for it.
The Marquess of Queensberry eventually baits Wilde by publicly demeaning him shortly after the opening of his play "The Importance of Being Earnest", and when Wilde makes a complaint of criminal libel against him, his sexual preference is exposed and he is arrested and tried for gross indecency. He chooses to fight the charge rather than flee the country. Eventually sentenced to two years' hard labor, he is visited in prison by his wife, who tells him she isn't divorcing him but is taking their sons to Germany and that he is welcome to visit as long as he never sees Douglas again. Oscar is released from prison and the film ends with his attempt to reconcile with Lord Alfred Douglas.
WILDE is the story of Oscar Wilde, the brilliant Victorian poet, writer, playwright, wit, and martyr for homosexuality. First the film establishes Wilde as a loving family man, complete with wife Constance and two sons, and portrays him as a dignified genius who is pained by his homosexuality. From his initial encounters with Robbie Ross, his first male lover, to his tragic affair with the beautiful and bratty Alfred "Bosie" Lord Douglas, Wilde is shown as a conflicted artist, fighting with his own urges as he amazes everyone around him. Bosie's father objects to his son's relationship with Oscar and eventually has him arrested and tried for gross indecency. Sentenced to two years' hard labour, Wilde is eventually released and the film ends with his attempt to reconcile with Bosie. Throughout the film, portions of the Wilde fairy tale "The Selfish Giant" are woven in: first by Wilde telling the story to his children, then as narrator, and finishing the story as the film ends with his tragic death.
Wilde: I do believe in anything, provided it is incredible. That's why I intend to die a Catholic, though I never could live as one.
Robbie Ross: I've given in and become a Catholic. I find Confession wonderfully consoling.
John Gray: I can't go to Confession when I want to kill Bosie... and myself...
The cast also includes: Vanessa Redgrave (Lady Speranza Wilde), Gemma Jones (Lady Queensberry), Judy Parfitt (Lady Mount-Temple), Zoë Wanamaker (Ada Leverson), Ioan Gruffudd (John Gray), Matthew Mills (Lionel Johnson), Jason Morell (Ernest Dowson), Peter Barkworth (Charles Gill), Robert Lang (C.O. Humphreys), Philip Locke (Judge), David Westhead (Edward Carson), Jack Knight (Cyril Wilde), Jackson Leach (Cyril Wilde, aged 4), Laurence Owen (Vyvyan Wilde), Benedict Sandiford (Alfred Wood), Mark Letheren (Charles Parker), Michael Fitzgerald (Alfred Taylor), Orlando Bloom (Rent Boy), Bob Sessions (Mine Owner), Adam Garcia (Jones), and many others. Arthur Sullivan and Debbie Wiseman composed the original music. Julian Mitchell wrote the screenplay from Richard Ellmann's book. Brian Gilbert directed.
In her review in the New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "a broad but effectively intimate portrait", and added, "Playing the large dandyish writer with obvious gusto, Stephen Fry looks uncannily like Wilde and presents an edgy mixture of superciliousness and vulnerability." In the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas stated the film, "has found a perfect Oscar in the formidably talented Stephen Fry...Coupled with Julian Mitchell's superb script...and director Brian Gilbert's total commitment to it and to his sterling cast, this deeply moving Wilde is likely to remain the definitive screen treatment of Oscar Wilde for years to come." In the San Francisco Examiner, David Armstrong wrote the film, "benefits from its lush period costumes and settings but gains even more from an accomplished cast of British film and stage actors. Gilbert's direction is sturdy but uninspired, and Ehle's part is underwritten. To her credit, Ehle movingly conveys the sad frustration that Wilde implanted in his lonely wife; but Ehle has to do the work, playing her feelings on her face, with little help from Julian Mitchell's screenplay."
