‘The Worst Man In London’: Rotterdam Review

Dir: Rodrigo Areias. Portugal. 2024. 130mins

London, in the second half of the 19th century. The Pre-Raphaelite movement dominates the art world. And at the heart of this milieu, with connections in high society and a taste for blackmail, is the Machiavellian Portuguese-born art dealer Charles Augustus Howell (Albano Jerónimo), a notorious character who was described by Arthur Conan Doyle as “the worst man in London”. Both the historical period and the morally dubious figure at the heart of Rodrigo Areias’s factually-inspired costume drama are richly intriguing. But the film’s pacing, tone and over-long running time may limit wider appeal.

 Struggles to cohere into a satisfying whole

This is the eighth feature from Areias (Hay Road, Blue Breath), who is also a prolific producer. Shot in Portugal (doubling, not entirely persuasively, as late-Victorian London) the film is a poetically sumptuous production full of tortured artists swigging laudanum against a backdrop of jewel-coloured brocades and a thick pall of atmospheric London smog.

But while the individual events that make up the story are fascinating – not least Howell’s involvement in the exhumation of the corpse of Lizzie Siddal (Victoria Guerra), the melancholic wife and muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Edward Ashley) – the film struggles to cohere into a satisfying whole. Tonally, it sits a little uneasily, not quite achieving the status of prestige costume drama for which the film is aiming.

This is, in part, due to Areias’ nods to the style and content of the melodramatic and overwrought Pre-Raphaelite art at the centre of the story. The vibrant, saturated colour palette favoured by such painters as Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais is lifted wholesale and reproduced in many of the interior shots in the film. It’s certainly striking, but it does feel stridently over-lit at times – and this, combined with an overuse of dry ice, serves to inadvertently evoke a cheesy Hammer Horror sensibility.

With his extravagant facial hair and imposing demeanour, Jerónimo cuts a striking figure as Howell, a man who sees the opportunities for self-advancement before he sees the art itself. His impact on screen is bolstered by first-rate work from the costume department – Howell’s lavish tailoring and fondness for pompous cravats only serve to emphasise his fundamental untrustworthiness.

Not that Rossetti seems to notice. Gaunt, consumptive and fretful, the artist and poet is more concerned with the covert packages containing bottles of laudanum with which Howell keeps him dependent. On behalf of the critic John Ruskin, Howell negotiates a stipend to support Lizzie Siddal (Victoria Guerra), an artist in her own right in addition to the Pre-Raphaelite movement’s favourite model. But she too is hooked on the tincture of opium that Howell supplies to his favoured clients.

In addition to peddling drugs, Howell also offers support to various political plots – notably an assassination attempt on the life of Napoleon III. He dabbles in forgery and, rather extensively, in blackmail. But there are so many scenes of Howell smoking caddishly and furtively bartering incriminating letters that it starts to feel as though the tangled web of intrigue has rather tied itself up in knots. A historically revisionist ending may not please sticklers for the truth, but then one could argue that it taps into the treacherous and unreliable character of Charles Augustus Howell. After all, the main thing we glean about the actual Howell is that he was a man who felt that the truth was overrated.