A Handful of Dust

Based on a novel by Evelyn Waugh, Handful of Dust is set amongst Britain's aristocracy of the 1930s. At sumptuous Hetton Abbey, tradition-bound country squire James Wilby and his wife Kristin Scott Thomas open their doors to well-connected but impoverished Rupert Graves. Graves returns Wilby's ...more

Adapted from Evelyn Waugh's novel, this very British film about how adhering to very British values can lead one on a straight and unrelenting path to hell serves up the same kind of manors and manners as Brideshead Revisited (also directed by Sturridge), but it gives equal exposure to the rot and ruin lurking beneath. A Handful of Dust is a surpassingly nasty film, in which people do rotten things while maintaining a lacquered veneer of grace and civility. The hideousness of these actions, and ...more