More particular about the story: a young English girl Lucy Honeychurch is accompanied by her very old cousin Charlotte Barlett (her chaperon) during her travels to Italy. There at the breakfast table Charlotte expresses loudly for everyone to hear her displeasure not to have a room with a view. One of the guests, Mr. Emerson, another Englishman, proposes her to exchange. She is first shocked at the proposition but then accepts and thus begins the English love story between Lucy and the the English gentleman’s son George. As you may easily guess they don’t employ the open means to talk about their feelings. So soon Lucy finds herself in the fine web of lies woven entirely by herself. She is ready to get strangled in this web but everything ends well.

The actors’ play deserves every praise: they look, act and speak like real Englishmen. But from the cold appearance one meets a passionate heart. We know what these people really are. In this film plays an excellent cast: Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy (and not a naive girl like one can expect from a young girl being accompanied by a spinster) but an independent person with her own thoughts and feelings. Julian Sands as George Emerson who is a way is the only character openly breaking the laws of society. And finally but not the last one Daniel day-Lewis as Cecil, Lucy's fiancé, he is brilliant, his play is one of the best in the film.

The most particular thing in this film is the language. It is the most refined British English that might be heard nowadays. I would not recommend watching this film in translation because just to hear the actors speaking British English is the pleasure by itself. You’ll lose about 80% of the charm in the translation. They don’t overplay (maybe just a little), they really speak like Victorian English people. And the dialogues are brilliant! Such a subtle humour can be met only in England, and these people who are usually regarded as prim dry Englishmen are capable for such insights, such wittiness that they leave Frenchmen and all the others behind. Listen for example to the dialogues between Lucy and her fiancé. It is hard to imitate.

I understand very well that people who like Hollywood blockbusters will probably not like this film: the humour and the situations might be too subtle for them to appreciate. But if you like English films and enjoy English novels you will like this movie. By the way it reminds in many aspects Aspern Papers by Henry James. He was an American who liked England and English ways. An Anglophile, in a word. The director James Ivory directed several films based on the works of Henry James.

So this is one of the best English films I have seen. You’ll like it if you are interested in Britich culture and language. I recommend it very much.

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