A Room with a View Review

Merchant Ivory built a reputation on furniture, and the reputation undersells what James Ivory does here with bodies. The sequence at the Sacred Lake, where Freddy, Mr Beebe and George strip and chase each other around a green pond until Lucy, her mother and Cecil walk into the middle of it, is staged as slapstick and lands as something closer to release, and it makes the argument of the whole film in four minutes.

Tony Pierce-Roberts shoots Florence in hard white midday light and Surrey in a soft, pollen-heavy green, so the two halves of Lucy's life are separated by weather before anyone states the choice. Maggie Smith turns Charlotte into a study in managed self-pity, and Denholm Elliott makes Mr Emerson's plain speaking sound like grief. Daniel Day-Lewis builds Cecil Vyse out of small physical refusals, a man holding his own body at arm's length, and the pince-nez and the flinch when Lucy is touched do more than the lines do.

The weakness sits at the centre of the romance. Julian Sands plays George as a handsome blank, so the passion Lucy is asked to risk everything for never takes hold, and Helena Bonham Carter has to supply the conviction for two.