The film opens with Oscar Wilde's 1882 visit to Leadville, Colorado during his lecture tour of the United States. Despite his flamboyant personality and urbane wit, he proves to be a success with the local silver miners as he regales them with tales of Renaissance silversmith Benvenuto Cellini.

Wilde returns to London and weds Constance Lloyd, and they have two sons in quick succession. While the second child is still an infant, the Wildes are playing host to young Canadian Robbie Ross, and the houseguest seduces Oscar and helps him come to terms with his homosexuality. On the opening night of his play Lady Windermere's Fan, Oscar is re-introduced to the dashingly handsome and openly foppish poet Lord Alfred Douglas, whom he had met briefly the year before, and the two fall into a passionate and tempestuous relationship. Hedonistic Alfred is not content to remain monogamous and frequently engages in sexual activity with rent boys while his older lover plays the role of voyeur. Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, objects to his son's relationship with Oscar.

The elder Douglas eventually baits Oscar by publicly demeaning him shortly after the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest, and when Oscar makes a complaint of criminal libel against him, his sexual preference is exposed and he is arrested and tried for gross indecency. He opts to fight the charge rather than flee the country. Eventually sentenced to two years' hard labour, he is visited in prison by his wife, who tells him she isn't divorcing him but is taking their sons to Germany and that he is welcome to visit as long as he never sees Douglas again. Oscar is released from prison and goes straight into exile to continental Europe. In spite of the advice or objections of others, he eventually meets with Lord Alfred.

Throughout the film, portions of the well-loved Wilde story The Selfish Giant are woven in, first by Wilde telling the story to his children, then as narrator, finishing the story as the film ends.

In a featurette on the film's DVD release, producer Marc Samuelson confesses casting Stephen Fry in the title role was both a blessing and a problem. Everyone agreed he was physically perfect for the part and more than capable of carrying it off, but the fact he wasn't a major presence in films made it difficult for them to obtain financing for the project.

In the DVD commentary, Fry, who is gay, admits he was nervous about the love scenes with his heterosexual co-stars. He says Jude Law, Michael Sheen and Ioan Gruffudd were quick to put him at ease.

Scenes were filmed at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire; Lulworth Cove, Studland Bay, and Swanage Pier in Dorset; Houghton Lodge in Hampshire; Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire; 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.

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 life of the flamboyant author" and commented, "Stephen Fry has the title role, and it's hard to imagine a more appropriate actor . . . In the last third, the film derails somewhat by turning preachy . . . While [it] captures its subject's singular charm, it ultimately doesn't do justice to his complexity."

In the San Francisco Examiner, David Armstrong said the film "benefits from its lush period costumes and settings but gains even more from an accomplished cast of British film and stage actors . . . Stephen Fry . . . slips right under the skin of the title character [and] presents a multidimensional portrait of a complex man . . . However, Wilde, like Wilde, is flawed. Gilbert's direction is sturdy but uninspired, and Ehle's part is underwritten. To her credit, Ehle movingly conveys the sad frustration that Wilde implanted in his lonely wife; but Ehle has to do the work, playing her feelings on her face, with little help from Julian Mitchell's screenplay."

Derek Elley of Variety observed, "Brian Gilbert, till now only a journeyman director, brings to the picture most of the qualities that were memorably absent in his previous costumer, Tom & Viv - visual fluency, deep-seated emotion and first rate playing from his cast."

In the Evening Standard, Alexander Walker called the film "an impressive and touching work of intelligence, compassion and tragic stature" and said Stephen Fry "returns to the top of the class with a dominating screen performance."