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the audience applauded

Sick Product of a Sick System

A different way of telling a story

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

I've rarely watched a movie that has had such a negative effect on my enjoyment of it in the last five minutes as this one did. Everything else about this was an absolute delight to me. I thought Lucy and George were cast perfectly and the actors played them with beautiful subtlety of emotion. The scenes of Italy were visually gorgeous. Thoroughly enjoyable until an utterly stupefying ending that was as unnecessary as it was nonsensical. You could literally cut out the last five minutes or so of the movie after the two lovers have gone to sleep in their hotel room and everything makes intuitive and emotional sense. For me It achieved with natural grace what too many movies only contrive to, yet instead of fading to the credits they tack on an ill fitting ending scenario that wearily negates everything that has happened in a way that is neither believable or logical. Did they change directors at the last minute? Was he just having a bad day on that shoot? I guess I'll never know. Perhaps a recut? It would be an easy one to do; snip off a little bit at the end from an otherwise great film and re-release it the way it should be.

First off I didn't really like the movie much. There wasn't much story in it though the introduction piqued my interest and made me expect something much better. After seeing the ending I wondered if there might be a second part because it ended so abruptly and so poorly. But what really upset me was the story's historical ignorance and it was a huge one. Consider that the story begins in Florence, Italy in 1922. Are you OK with that? Ten years later she finds herself in Florence with an Italian man she met when the story first began - 1922. Near this last scene we see the man the woman in the story married lying dead on some battlefield which would have happened certainly after 1922 and before 1932. She even tells the Italian she lost her husband in the war. What war was England involved in between 1922 and 1932? By the looks of the battlefield, it looks like the trenches of WWI but that war ended in 1918, right? Perhaps in the editing phase of the movie, whoever entered the date 1922 meant to enter 1912 instead? 1922 it couldn't have been. The movie was pretty bad anyway, so I suppose it really doesn't matter.

CASTING: A+ -- I thought that George Emerson in this production had a down-to-earth sexiness that was much more appealing than Julian Sands' version. The class differences were emphasized to very good effect in this one -- by comparison, Sands' Mr. Emerson seemed like an aristocrat, which made it harder to see the family's class objections. Lucy and the other characters were all played very well also -- the only character I didn't love was the elder Mr. Emerson, who was too much of a broad caricature for me here -- I preferred him in the original version, where he was my favorite character altogether. (I must admit that since Harry Potter, I can't see Timothy Spall without ears and whiskers -- he will be Peter Pettigrew/Scabbers forever in my mind).PLOT-CHANGE: F- This actually ruined the whole thing for me -- it made me furious! I never read the Forster novel, so after watching Davies' ending, I assumed that this must have been Forster's original ending, and reasoned that the Merchant/Ivory version must have been re-fitted with a false happy ending, because who would ever do the reverse? However, as I cried for fifteen minutes after the program ended, I knew that I definitely preferred the happy ending, manufactured or not -- the tragedy just seemed WRONG. How much angrier I was when I found out that Forster's novel DID have a happy ending! Good God! (Is that who Andrew Davies thinks he is?!) I've never heard of adapting a novel by changing the ending into a tragedy -- it doesn't fit, it subverts the whole point, and it ruined my evening. Andrew Davies, get over your pseudo-artistic self -- that stupid, ridiculous ending was a travesty. If Davies wanted to get attention for originality, he certainly did -- and from the reviews I've seen, it's overwhelmingly in the form of disgust.

After having loved the Merchant Ivory film I was looking forward to this adaptation but something was OFF from the moment it began when Lucy goes to Florence alone, with a bob, in 1922, and says her husband is not with her. Then we go back in time and back again as she remembers her first time in Florence with a Room With A View when she meets George who is her soul mate. Why he is her soul mate or why anyone would want to be her soul mate is not fully developed at all. Neither of these romantic characters were well developed or appealing. Of course, they do fall in love, although Lucy proceeds to run away and get engaged to someone else. Eventually they find each other and marry/elope. About the only good scene is when she rushes to him when he is in the pond... but do we really believe this either? What I hated is we discover George dies and then Lucy appears to be holding hands with the Italian cabbie at the end of the film. Horrible. Why not leave this as a romantic story with the two of them together? Must see the other film version again now... to get this rubbish out of my head!