A Room With A View: B-

I have been told that in book-form, E.M. Forrester's A Room With A View is a great, charismatic work. Though I have never read Forrester, I can attest to the fact that this extraordinarily literal-minded adaptation by famed team Ivory-Merchant isn't very charismatic at all. By bringing a love story to screen, with a script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, directory James Ivory and producer Ishmail Merchant have completely forgotten one of E.M. Forrester's biggest objectives in his writing: the lives of quirky, compassionate rich people. Or perhaps it is because the "dame" in this grand English romance is played with such a sullen snarl of character by Helena Bonham Carter that I find little more to this trifle than some silly fou-fouing and then a kiss.

Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) is on a trip to Florence, Italy. It seems a fun, memorable vacation...if one forgets that Lucy is being escorted by her cousin, Charlotte (Maggie Smith in a thanklessly ridiculous role with which she takes grand comedic command). There they meet the romance novelist Eleanor Lavish (Judi Dench) who tries with all sorts of salacious haste to bring to them the intoxicating passion that populates all old Italian towns. They spend the rest of the time cavorting about Italy acting as ditzy English tourists and having all kinds of misadventures directly intended to provide slight little laughs. But lest we forget, before Lucy heads back to England she meets the gaze of George Emmerson (Julian Sands) who offers her his room with a view. By the time the vacation is over they have shared a passionate kiss and the audience is told with stern finger-wagging that they must sit through the next 60 minutes just to watch the two lovebirds come to their sense and fall in love.

The reason I sound so cynical, so aggrivated by the whole production is that, is that in any good romance of class-shattering proportions there must be an acknowledged sense of romantic spirit...or charisma. I must concede that there are moments that pop off the screen with spirit and richness that I almost could bring myself to love this movie for those times, however brief. And especially in those scenes with Maggie Smith, Daniel Day-Lewis, and the rest of the Honeychurch Clan, I did laugh great gustos. Plus the film is made with an attractive pedigree and such ability shows through in some of the finer stylistic details.

The possibility, as I mentioned from the start, still haunts me that since our heroine - our admirable protagonist blind to the love beckoning her from around the corner - is such a petulant brat there is no emotional attachment to her travails. Thus the climax of the film loses much of its charge. Despite the fact that the movie boasts E.M. Forrester's name, it has little of his energy.