Sam Sloan 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.

Z Wing At first I wasn't sure how I'd react to this remake because I used to think I enjoyed the original, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it much easier to follow the *story* and see the *characters* in this retelling. It was actually quite refreshing.I didn't realize until I saw this version that the 1985 film is so self-consciously stylistic that it ends up being too clever for its own good. In the original, the intonation by the actors is so stilted that the dialogue feels like a series of non sequiturs. Every shot screams, "Look! Look at this gorgeous cinematography!" There isn't much chemistry between the two romantic leads, Daniel Day Lewis reduces Cecil to a tedious cartoon character, and Denholm Elliott overdoes his accent. Julian Sands, though interesting, seems more like a brother from another planet than a thoughtful subversive. In the Merchant-Ivory version, the story and the characters get buried under a layer of heavily vaselined romanticism.Through this bittersweet remake, I finally saw the story and felt I better understood what Forster was trying to say in his book. You see the Emersons' working-class roots and how they stick out among the more genteel travelers in Florence. You get to really see Cecil as a good but flawed human being. And, most importantly, you see Lucy as a sweet but unsure girl growing into a bright young woman in spite of herself.Director Renton keeps a light touch and doesn't spend any more time than is necessary on any part of the story. You see a dinner party, you hear a rough voice cut through the chatter, you see Charlotte put on the spot. That's the point of that scene, and it does its job with no extra fanfare. There is no inordinate amount of time spent on playing up some tennis game or skinnydipping episode. No one is allowed to chew the scenery.As a result, I felt moved by the passion between Lucy and George in a way that I didn't when watching the original. I felt the pain caused by their predicament. The scenes between Lucy and George were more emotionally charged, especially when Lucy has her epiphany. In the 1985 version, every scene between the two leads feels like little more than comic relief.And yes, I liked the ending in this version. It added gravity to the story and helped me feel the depth of Lucy's love for George. Kudos to Andrew Davies, Nicholas Renton, and especially to Rafe Spall and the beautiful Elaine Cassidy. They all did a brilliant job in bringing a terrific story to life. By the end of this version, I had forgotten all about the original and fell in love with these characters all over again.

Martin Bradley James Ivory's screen version of "A Room with a View" has always been one of my favourite films, (I'm a hopeless romantic; now I'm out of the closet), so I approached this television version with some trepidation and for the first twenty minutes or so I was sure I was right; they should leave well enough alone. But then the power of the original novel began to exert itself. And so did the casting. I was never that happy with Helena Bonham-Carter and Julian Sands as the young lovers in the Ivory version, (she simpered; he was gorgeous in a big, dumb hunk kind of way but Sands was also a shade too upper-crust for a working class lad). Here Elaine Cassidy caught the rebellious spirit of Lucy from the off while Rafe Spall seemed to me to be authentically working-class while his real-life father Timothy was simply magnificent in the role of his screen father, Mr Emerson. Laurence Fox, too, was far more recognizably human and less of a caricature than Daniel Day-Lewis as Cecil Vyse. Best of all, in the crucial role of Miss Barlett, Sophie Thompson succeeded in banishing all memories of Maggie Smith and made the part her own. Thompson could now write an encyclopedic textbook on how to play nervous embarrassment. So the casting worked and the first hurdle of replicating a beloved original was overcome.But there were three other crucial differences between this version and Ivory's. Firstly the story is told in flashback as Lucy returns to Florence on her own in 1922. Why is she alone? The clue, of course, is in the year and the ending makes explicit what we may have already guessed. Secondly there is a coda, very nicely done, that seems to set out a happy future for her and thirdly, perhaps you may think unnecessarily, scriptwriter Andrew Davies introduces a sub-text that implies that both Cecil and Mr Beebe, the kindly, match-making vicar played camply by Simon Callow in the Ivory version and by Mark Williams in a much more restrained way here, are gay. Blink and you may well miss the inference and may wonder exactly what Mr Beebe is referring to when later he says that Cecil is not the marrying kind. It is, of course, only one reading into the behaviour of both these characters but it certainly goes some way to explaining the character of Beebe, if not always Cecil. And it ensures that this adaptation is not simply a slavish copy of the James Ivory version.Did I prefer it to Ivory's version? Well, not exactly but it held me in its velvet glove of a grip right to the end and finally it moved in a really quite unexpected fashion.

scout-15 I'd like to say how much I enjoyed this ITV remake. I'd like to, and I had been prepared to until the final five minutes of the film, but I can't.In the interest of full disclosure, I've always been a huge fan of the 1985 Merchant Ivory adaptation, so I was prepared not to like this. I was pleasantly surprised as the story unwound. To its credit, this version makes much more of the class difference between George and Lucy which wasn't as obvious in the other one, with the aristocratic-looking Helena Bonham Carter and Julian Sands in the leads.In retrospect, HBC and Sands both come off as too remote and stiff -- unfortunate in a film that is supposed to be about a young woman's sexual awakening and young man who feels truly alive. Rafe Spall and Elaine Cassidy suit the parts admirably, giving their characters a warm sexiness that their predecessors never could.SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER -- My HUGE problem with this adaptation is the completely unnecessary ending tacked on in a rare misstep by Andrew Davies, which takes place 10 years after the events we have just seen. Lucy has returned for a bittersweet visit to Florence, where we learn that her beloved husband George was killed in WWI. She takes a nostalgic trip to the meadow where she and George first kissed, and the film ends with the completely bizarre suggestion that she will end up with the carriage driver Paolo who led her to George on that fateful day! I don't have a problem, in general, with adapters taking liberties with their source material, but this ending feels utterly ridiculous. If Davies wanted to suggest the looming war or play up more of the class struggle, surely there were other ways to do it. The film up to that point had been about truly being alive. Showing us that George has died undoes the joy that has preceded and feels like nothing so much as superfluous, self-indulgent twaddle.Disappointing, Mr. Davies.