WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD is a film directed by Charles Sturridge. The script was written by Sturridge, Tim Sullivan, and Derek Granger, from the novel by E.M. Forster. It stars Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis, Rupert Graves, Giovanni Guidelli, Barbara Jefford, and Helen Mirren. Cinematography is by Michael Coulter, and the production design by Simon Holland. Rated PG, due to subject matter.
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD proves that the works of E.M. Forster are not the exclusive property of the Merchant-Ivory juggernaut (which will be rolling out HOWARD'S END shortly). Charles Sturridge (A HANDFUL OF DUST) and his collaborators have produced a splendid and faithful translation of Forster's first novel to the screen. Sturridge has managed to round out some of Forster's cardboard-cutout characters, as well as to bring out Forster's great, but often neglected, gift for comedy. But most of all he has given a strong actors' film that breathes with a life of its own.
Many of the principals are veterans of other Forster adaptations, but here they turn in individualized performances that sometimes rise, as in the case of Rupert Graves, to a career best. Judy Davis was in A PASSAGE TO INDIA, Graves in A ROOM WITH A VIEW and MAURICE, Helen Bonham Carter in A ROOM WITH A VIEW and the upcoming HOWARD'S END.
Rupert Graves gives us his personal best as the ineffectual, but kindly, Phillip Herriton. Phillip tells us that "Some people are born not to do things." It is his moral situation that more is the center of the story. His actions and words, his inaction and silence, start and end the drama. He has a wonderful scene involving opera and loosening his Edwardian respectability, but he also has to face up to the price to be paid. He does so poignantly, full of love and friendship, in a moving, yet light-handed, performance.
Helena Bonham Carter works against type to some degree here. No mad scenes for her this time, although she is very angry. Her characterization of the quiet, fuming Caroline Abbot is rich and restrained.
Quite the opposite performance is registered by the inestimable Judy Davis, who has become one of my favorite performers only since IMPROMPTU, more shame on me. Although she's been making films for years (MY BRILLIANT CAREER, 1979, being her debut credit, I believe) and I've seen her without focusing in on her as a personality. This is no doubt a tribute (of sorts) to her remarkable skills at characterization. Her Harriet Herriton is strait-laced, no-nonsense, embittered, provincial, narrow, selfish, hysterical, and at times uproariously funny. Davis's bag of physical tricks include tics, tsk-tsks, tears, flinches, and a body held more rigidly than any corset could ever have managed.
Helen Mirren plays Lilia, the doomed in-law of the Herritons. She is sexy and earthy, a tiny rebel against both the superficialities and rigidities of the England she flees and the Italy she finds a kind of refuge in. Mirren and Davis are great beauties, who, because they are also great actors, can turn their beauty off and on to suit the moment. Davis especially achieves a terrible pinched look, but Mirren can look worn out and used as her life unravels.
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD is foremost a social comedy that asks something very serious of us -- that we take part in life whatever the risks, that nothing is worse or more dangerous than the bystander. I recommend it strongly, no matter what the ticket price.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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