James Ivory’s Edwardian romance is warm, funny and more alert to desire than its well-mannered surface suggests. Helena Bonham Carter and Maggie Smith make it worth the occasional slow stretch; we recommend it with pleasure.
James Ivory’s A Room with a View is funny, warm and occasionally too leisurely for its own good. Working from E.M. Forster’s’s novel, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala finds comedy in the effort people make to seem proper when their feelings are anything but orderly. The Edwardian setting gives that effort its particular rules. The film understands how wearing it can be to live among people who think embarrassment is a serious moral failure.
Helena Bonham Carter’s Lucy Honeychurch is crucial because the film would become insufferable if she were simply more sensible than everybody around her. Bonham Carter allows hesitation to look awkward rather than fetching, and makes uncertainty interesting without asking us to applaud it. We were moved by the effort in her performance to keep Lucy’s feelings from showing. It is the visible strain of behaving properly that makes us want things to become easier for her.
Maggie Smith makes Charlotte Bartlett’s politeness exhausting in a way that remains funny: every courtesy seems to require a further adjustment from somebody else. We laughed at how much dissatisfaction she can put into a civil tone. Daniel Day-Lewis gives Cecil Vyse a stiffness that is funny before it becomes limiting, while Julian Sands’s George Emerson supplies a welcome contrast. The limitation belongs partly to Jhabvala’s writing: once we have recognised a person’s social habits, some exchanges merely give us another opportunity to recognise them.
Tony Pierce-Roberts’s photography makes the scenery inviting enough that its prettiness sometimes competes with the people. Yet that appeal matters: we can understand the attraction of the life whose restrictions the film is teasing. Brian Ackland-Snow and Gianni Quaranta’s production design makes the period surroundings feel comfortable and settled, giving us another reason to linger. It works, although there are moments when we would rather Ivory hurried past the scenery and returned to Lucy.
Humphrey Dixon’s editing allows the comic performances to settle, which is essential when a character’s manner can be funnier than the line. It is less helpful when an exchange has already made its point and the film continues at the same untroubled pace. Richard Robbins’s music encourages us to feel the romance, but occasionally supplies more warmth than the drama has generated on its own. Those are the stretches in which we notice how slowly the story is moving.
Period romance can get by on clothes and attractive locations, and Ivory sometimes comes close to letting it do so. What saves this one is the humour, especially its willingness to let affection coexist with irritation. The people are allowed to be tiresome without becoming worthless, and their ridiculous behaviour is rarely treated as a reason to dismiss them. Our reservation is that this kindness occasionally softens a social judgement that could stand to be more uncomfortable.
That softness does not empty the film of feeling, though it makes the comedy less sharp than it might have been. Bonham Carter keeps Lucy worth attending to whenever the handsome surroundings threaten to take over. At 117 minutes, this is an evening for a patient mood rather than an urgent one. Watch it for the actors, and allow them a little longer than they need.
