Summary
An Edwardian ballroom flickers to life beneath chandeliers of cut-glass anxiety; Katherine Lewis, porcelain yet volcanic, plays society gem Lillian Devereux, whose blood-blue veins pulse with more secrets than the family vault. Enter James Liddy’s roguish card-sharp, Julian Hawthorne—equal parts poet and pickpocket—arriving in satin spats to fleece the gentry, only to have his own heart swindled by the heiress’s brittle laughter. Over one languid weekend at the Ashcroft estate, fortunes rise and collapse like badly stacked house of cards: a single mis-dealt hand of baccarat swaps heirlooms, honor, and futures, while upstairs maids trade whispers sharper than broken crystal. Darling’s screenplay stitches Wildean epigrams onto a corset of melodrama, so that every waltz feels like a duel and every whispered “I love you” arrives with the metallic taste of blackmail. By the time dawn stains the terrace crimson, diamonds have been scattered like seeds, hearts have changed owners more often than dance partners, and the final image—Lillian’s gloved fingers releasing the last gem into a moonlit fountain—feels less a surrender than a declaration of war on the very idea of possession.
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