A Room With a View (1986)
Grade: 92
Lucy (Helena Bonham Carter) is a tourist in Italy at the turn of the century. She is chaperoned by Charlotte (Maggie Smith). Much older, Charlotte is well-intentioned but always makes a muddle of things. They have been promised rooms with a view, but all they can see is a back alley. Meeting the other Inn residents at dinner, Mr. Emerson (Denholm Elliot) offers his room and that of son George (Julian Sands). However, he makes this offer so tactlessly that Charlotte refuses and flees the dining room with Lucy. The charmingly meddlesome vicar Mr. Beebe (Simon Callow) intervenes to arrange the transfer of rooms.
Lucy is passionate but repressed. Her emotional outlet is playing the piano, and she prefers dramatic numbers by Beethoven. Through much of the movie she simply seethes, annoyed at the antics of the characters surrounding her but not always willing to express her annoyance.
While in Italy, the gregarious Mr. Emerson implores her to talk to George, a diffident and mysterious young man.
At the village square, there is a bloody row between a crowd of Italians. Lucy faints, but George is there to catch her and take her to safety. George believes "something wonderful has happened," but she represses her feelings for him, as they may not be judged proper by genteel society. Later, he spontaneously and passionately kisses her, witnessed by the shocked Charlotte.
Lucy returns to her mother's house in England. Free-spirited younger brother Freddy (Rupert Graves) also lives there. Upon arrival, Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis) proposes to her, and for some reason she accepts. If you have seen Daniel Day-Lewis in (for example) "In the Name of the Father" (also recommended) you would never recognize him here, playing the sneering, bookish, affected intellectual Cecil. He gives an even better performance than Maggie Smith, who instead copped the Oscar nomination.
We realize that Lucy is halfway between Cecil's world and George's. She shares Cecil's repression of sexuality, but shares George's passionate nature. While the audience wants her to end up with George, the decision is not so easy for her.
In a rather amazing set of coincidences, Mr. Beebe is the local vicar and the Emersons rent a nearby villa. Freddy takes a liking to George and invites him to his house, where their fun playing tennis and naked swimming (apparently how this film got its unmerited TV-MA rating) contrasts with Cecil's refusal to participate, and his condescension towards everything and everyone.
George makes a play for Lucy, imploring her to dump Cecil for him. Lucy, now muddled from repressing her feelings, tells him to leave her house forever, but then breaks the engagement with Cecil, who in his shock is almost likable. Lucy decides to run away from her emotional conflicts by vacationing in Constantinople (or Athens, whatever).
Charlotte's role changes from chaperone to matchmaker after a visit with the elder Emerson. He convinces her to send Lucy to talk with him. He tells her that Lucy has been lying to everyone, including herself, and that she loves George and should be with him. Uncharacteristically, Lucy breaks into tears and surrenders. We next see her in a happy ending with George.
http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews