Angels and Insects (1995) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

Around 1860, a natural scientist was on his way back from the Amazon back to Britain when his ship was wrecked. He survived, but ten years of work was lost, all of his notebooks and specimens having been consigned to the locker of a certain D. Jones. Virtually penniless, of common birth, and excruciatingly boring, he seems to have few prospects when his sponsor offers to employ him as a tutor to his youngest children. He courts the master's hopelessly beautiful daughter (Patsy Kensit), and surprises even himself when the rich and beautiful woman responds and eventually agrees to marry him, over the loudly proclaimed objections of her brother, who considers this wimpy commoner beneath his sister's dignity.

Or is there something more to it?

Yes, there is. Remember what I said earlier. This family doesn't really represent our picture of a typical Victorian family, but rather resembles something from a Tennessee Williams play, and the secrets will eventually float to the surface. The poor scientist never stops to consider that his bride's previous fiancé committed suicide rather than marry her. Maybe a trained scientific thinker might have spotted a red flag right there, but not our lad. He presses onward, like a researcher publishing his book before all his evidence has been gathered.

The unique identifier of this movie is a heavy dose of metaphor and symbolism. You see, our hero is an entomologist, and the movie seems to be absorbed with the parallels between the behaviors of the insect world and human behavior. The absorption with the study of animal behavior and natural selection, and the application of that learning toward the end of modeling human behavior, is entirely appropriate for the time period pictured in the movie. In the generations immediately following Darwin, it was customary for educated people to use the new learning in the natural sciences to speculate on man's nature.

We are no longer quite so fascinated with the wider meaning of the ability of rats and ants to adapt to new families and kill their biological parents, or with the nature of animals that eat their own young. Some people now believe that these facts may provide no significant lessons or models for understanding human behavior. But they still make fascinating metaphors, even in our century. Our hero is attracted to a beautiful butterfly, for example, and does not see the industrious and clever ant who would have made him a far better match. Unfortunately, the dedicated scientist doesn't seem to see the parallels between his studies and his personal life.

To make matters even more literary - there is the depressingly obvious word game which he plays with the children's playing cards, in which the author pounds home the anagrammatic connection between the word "insect" (his life's joy) and the word "incest" (his life's misery).

If I haven't already given enough examples, consider this: in addition to her many butterfly dresses, Kensit also wears one gown which is striped black and yellow like a honeybee. (I don't have any expertise in this area, but it doesn't seem like an accurate period look to me. On the other hand, if it is, I am edified and amused to know that there was a time when black and yellow horizontal stripes were considered both fashionable and flattering. Well, except on John Belushi.)

Visually, it is a beautiful film, since the women's costumes and hair styles are compared in nature and purpose to the bright colors of the animal kingdom which cause such species as baboons and birds and butterflies to choose their mates. It is also a highly erotic presentation, with quite a few sex scenes, as well as frontal nudity of both the male and female variety, including a lingering shot of a man with a visible erection.

It's also an intelligent film, but not one that is especially subtle or entertaining, and the first half hour is  tedious and almost completely devoid of energy.