Having fallen for a budding actress (Samantha Morton), the Earl has a bet with his friends that he can turn her into a star with personal coaching.
He also agrees to write an entertainment in honour of the French ambassador, a show that is sexually well over the top.
The Libertine has an episodic structure that serves it well enough and a supporting cast that offers Depp some lively background
British director Laurence Dunmore, making his movie debut from an advertising background, gives his scenes plenty of muck and dirt, a grim England indeed. But he also uses a lot of low lighting so sometimes you feel you are peering through the gloom to catch the action.
The script concentrates on only one aspect of the Earl's life, the best-known, his naughty ways. But he was by some accounts a good poet, although much of it was not published until after his death, and in his early days, at least, a sea hero.
All this is virtually ignored to allow us to be shocked and appalled at Rochester's outrageous behaviour, wonderfully delineated by Depp at his most theatrical.
The Earl was dead of syphilis by the age of 33, a life squandered in a tragic tale of self-destruction.
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