‘Insects’ About As Unpredictable As A Formal Garden

Big houses are intriguing. This is especially true of those mansions that show up in stuffy English melodramas.

You know the ones I mean, estates where a huge expanse of lawn leads to a brick building more reminiscent of a Jane Austen theme park than an actual home.

The intrigue associated with all this, of course, recalls that Charlie Rich song, “No One Knows What Goes on Behind Closed Doors.”

The interesting aspect to Philip Haas’ movie “Angels and Insects,” based on a screenplay that he wrote with his wife (and co-producer) Belinda, is that he emphasizes the fact some people know exactly what goes on behind closed doors.

They’re the people who live just down the hall.

The twist here, based on A.S. Byatt’s novel “Morpho Eugenia,” is that the people down the hall often know more than the people who have easy access to the doors in question.

William Adamson (Mark Rylance) is one of the clueless ones. An educated man of scientific bent who has just returned from an extended stay in the Amazon, William comes to live with his benefactor, Sir Harald Alabaster (Jeremy Kemp). Not only does William have no prospects, but all of his notes and most of the specimens that he gathered in South America have been lost in a shipwreck.

So he keeps Sir Harald company, offering to help the old man catalog his own biological collection. And as he settles in, he serves as a resource for the Alabaster family teacher (Kristin Scott Thomas).

Yet even if William is unlikely ever to forget the gap between his own humble origins (his father is a butcher) and the Alabasters’ noble rank, someone is always ready to remind him of it.

“Just don’t get too comfortable,” Sir Harald’s arrogant son Edgar (Douglass Henshall) tells him. “You’re not one of us.”

But biology wins out, so to speak, and despite his lack of means and common birth, William falls in love with Sir Harald’s daughter Eugenia (Patsy Kensit). When she returns his affections, the match is made.

That’s when the trouble begins.

As a somewhat entertaining view, “Angels and Insects” has several things to recommend it. Set in 1862, the film carries an authentic feel of that time while capturing well the green beauty that we have come to know, through such movies as this, as the English countryside.

The soul of the film is Rylance, who is a good choice for William. The kind of actor who normally wouldn’t stand out from the ensemble, he imbues the good scientist with a sense of decency and honor that contrasts mightily with the Alabaster brood.

William’s only problem is that he is shortsighted to a fault. And only Rylance could still elicit sympathy for William as he utters such a naive line about his new-born children: “They don’t seem to resemble me at all.”

The film’s problems, though, nearly match its qualities. Overall, “Angels and Insects” is the kind of film that hits you over the head with symbolic imagery. Just as William turns over a rotting log to show the youngest Alabasters the creepy-crawlies thriving underneath, you know that he ultimately will do the same thing with his life. When William explains the duties of an ant colony - the queen, the workers and most of all the drones - you clearly can see their counterparts among the household.

Finally, though William may remain in the dark, director Haas doesn’t leave his audiences guessing at much. To the tune of a violin-heavy score that serves as a continual audio nudge in the ribs, we are led to conclusions about the Alabasters that William, had his eyes been alert to something other than Eugenia’s tempting mouth, might have spotted from the beginning.

Unlike William, Haas isn’t exactly careful in the way he turns over the rotting log of Alabaster family history.

Thanks to Haas, the keys to those closed doors are far too easy to find.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “ANGELS AND INSECTS” Location: Magic Lantern Cinemas Credits: Directed and co-written (with Belinda Haas) by Philip Haas, starring Mark Rylance, Patsy Kensit, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jeremy Kemp and Douglas Henshall Running time: 1:57 Rating: R