Synopsis
The Happy Prince is the untold story of the last days in the tragic times of Oscar Wilde.
This great mean of letters, once one of the most famous authors in England, is now a superstar on the skids. We are taken through his last nocturnal ramble through Paris. Totally inebriated Oscar falls off a table at a Varieté.
In bed, dying, the past floods back. Friends appear. The room expands and shrinks inside his addled head, transporting him to other times and places. We immerge into the great love stories of Oscar Wilde, notably his relationship to Lord Alfred Douglas, which observed under the microscope of death is revealed for what it really is – a passionate affair based on snobbery. And yet, through the smoky fumes of absinthe and cigars, appears a twinkle of love: Robbie. Sternly devoted to Oscar like no other friend ever has before, true and faithful.
Oscar’s visions intensify. Past scenes of passion, injured pride, ignorance and humiliation are reviewed in his minds eye. One last time fame is calling as the opulence of the Savoy Hotel melts back into the dirty, oppressive reality. By now, Oscar’s brain has flickered into oblivion and now the spectres of memory invade the hotel bedroom to haunt him: His wife Constance, who he failed miserably and who still loves him, his sons Cyril and Vivian, ashen and unforgiving, and at last Jesus Christ, forgiving his sins.
Oscar tries to encounter suffering with irony but the cracks in the mask widen. Desperately he performs the tragedy of his life to the very end, a larger than life protagonist in his own comedies.