Posted: Sat., Dec. 31, 1983, 11:00pm PT

Another Country

(UK)

By Variety Staff

Goldcrest. Director Marek Kanievska; Producer Alan Marshall; Writer Julian Mitchell; Camera Peter Biziou Editor Gerry Hambling; Music Michael Storey Art Brian Morris

Rupert Everett Colin Firth Michael Jenn Robert Addie Rupert Wainwright Anna Massey

Julian Mitchell's adaptation of his successful West End play Another Country is an absorbing tale about life in a British public (i.e. private) boarding school in the 1930s. Story is supposedly based on the early friendship of Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean who, in the 1950s, spied for the USSR while working for the British government but defected to Moscow before they could be arrested.

Mitchell's contention is that the homosexuality of Burgess, called Bennett here, made him as much an outsider in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the British uppercrust as did MacLean's (Judd's) Marxism.

Film is marvelously acted down the line, with Rupert Everett a standout as the tormented Bennett.

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1984. Running time: 90 MIN.