Review of A Room with a View (1986) by Nate W — 04 Jun 2012

Just one of a series of acclaimed collaborations that came to be known as Merchant/Ivory pictures, "A Room with a View" is everything that one would hope to find in a romantic British costume drama (if of course, one is looking for that kind of thing).

Helena Bonham Carter plays the buttoned-down young woman whose social upbringing has dissuaded her from giving in to her amorous passions. It is well enough acted and prettily enough put together that it can be discerned from a BBC teleplay.

However lavish the romance becomes at times - a quickly interrupted moment of splendour in the grass comes to mind - other parts of the film can't shake that flavour of dryness. Still, director James Ivory mostly succeeds in drawing performances of human vitality from his talented cast to combat the inherent stuffiness of the source material.

Helping on that front is his attention to environment, both natural and urban. A personal highlight includes seeing the two great dames (Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, some 27 years younger than now) cavorting through Florence without a map.

Dench steals the show, by the way, with only a few early scenes.