Brokeback Mountain bags four BAFTA awards

Gay cowboy romance

Brokeback Mountain

took four awards including best picture at the British Academy Film Awards, a result that boosts its hopes for the Oscars in two weeks' time.

The film beat a strong best-picture shortlist on Sunday that included literary biopic Capote, LA story Crash, 1950s drama Good Night, and Good Luck and British favourite The Constant Gardener.

The Constant Gardener

, a spy thriller and love story that went into the ceremony with 10 nominations, took only one award, for editing.

Memoirs of a Geisha

won three awards, for cinematography, music and costume design.

Ang Lee was named best director for Brokeback, which is up for eight Academy Awards on March 5. Jake Gyllenhaal won the best supporting actor prize for playing Jack Twist, one of two cowpokes who fall in love over the course of a Wyoming summer.

Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, who adapted Annie Proulx's short story, won the adapted screenplay prize.

Gyllenhaal's co-star Heath Ledger was beaten to the best-actor prize by Philip Seymour Hoffman for his depiction of troubled writer Truman Capote in Capote.

Reese Witherspoon was named best actress for playing June Carter Cash, wife and muse of country great Johnny Cash, in Walk the Line.

Thandie Newton took the best supporting actress award for Crash, an edgy depiction of racial divisions in modern-day Los Angeles.

The film, which had nine nominations, also won the prize for best original screenplay.