Magdalen College in Oxford; Lincoln's Inn in Holborn and Somerset House in the Strand. The film premiered at the 1997 Venice Film Festival and was the opening night selection at the 1998 San Francisco International Film Festival. Orlando Bloom made his first on-screen appearance in this film with a brief role as a rent boy. Release Critical reaction In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "a broad but effectively intimate portrait" and added, "Playing the large dandyish writer with obvious gusto, Stephen Fry looks uncannily like Wilde and presents an edgy mixture of superciliousness and vulnerability. Though the film suffers a case of quip-lash thanks to its tireless Wildean witticisms ... Fry's warmly sympathetic performance finds the gentleness beneath the wit." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said the film "has the good fortune to star Stephen Fry, a British author, actor and comedian who looks a lot like Wilde and has many of the same attributes: He is very tall, he is somewhat plump, he is gay, he is funny and he makes his conversation into an art. That he is also a fine actor is important, because the film requires him to show many conflicting aspects of Wilde's life ... [He] brings a depth and gentleness to the role." In the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas stated the film "has found a perfect Oscar in the formidably talented Stephen Fry ... Coupled with Julian Mitchell's superb script ... and director Brian Gilbert's total commitment to it and to his sterling cast, this deeply moving Wilde is likely to remain the definitive screen treatment of Oscar Wilde for years to come ... Gilbert clearly gave Fry and Law the confidence to play roles that would require a baring of souls, and they are triumphant ... Unfortunately, the film is marred by Debbie Wiseman's trite, overly emotional score, which has the effect of needlessly underlining every point along the way that has otherwise been made so subtly. It is especially undermining in its morose tone in the film's final sequences, when the pace naturally slows down as Wilde's life enters its final phase. Everyone else involved in the making of Wilde has done an exemplary job illuminating a man and his era." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "a sympathetic and, for the most part, nicely realized look into the private