It is unfair, really, to directly compare James Ivory's Academy Award-nominated production with this more modest Masterpiece Theater version.
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At 86 minutes, WGBH-Boston´s adaptation of E.M. Forster´s is a good deal leaner than the 1985 film version by director James Ivory. Yet not much power is lost in the missing minutes, apart from the ending, which feels rushed. While Ivory´s remains the superior version, I quite liked many aspects of this production, particularly the lead character of Lucy Honeychurch as played by Elaine Cassidy.
After a brief prologue, the film opens in Florence, Italy where Lucy and her chaperone Charlotte (Sophie Thompson) have repaired to soak up a bit of foreign culture. This proves difficult as they are surrounded by fellow Britons (clergymen and spinsters mostly) who would rather reprove Italian customs from within the comfort of their hotel than learn anything about their European neighbors.
It is delightful the way in which tourists, especially the foreign kind, are mocked by Andrew Davies´ script. This is especially true in Florence, as any eager visitor to the city can attest. One travels there hoping (perhaps naively) to find a renaissance of one´s own, finding instead a meretricious city overrun with loud, ignorant tourists and teeming with pricey trinkets. Excuse the slight digression, but this is the same Florence Lucy finds.
Her compatriots wander the city with their nose in travel books instead of fixing their eyes on the art and architecture that fills the city. Perhaps it is a safer way to travel, but far less fulfilling. Lucy, whose passions are aroused by the sight of the sensual twisting of white, marble sculptures, might be unaccustomed to such emotions--even unnerved by them--but the feeling of that visceral surge is unparalleled. No book can evoke such a sensation. It must be experienced, a lesson Lucy learns throughout the course of the film.
George (Rafe Spall), son to a member of Lucy´s tour group, also inspires such feelings in her. Social mores forbid her from pursuing or even recognizing the way he makes her heart flutter, so she and the uptight Charlotte return to England without, as one character puts it, "imbibing the essence" of Italy. Oh, before that, however, they go to Rome so Lucy can meet the boorish Cecil (Laurence Fox).
Cecil is safe and, perhaps more importantly, rich and well connected socially, so Lucy persuades herself that he is worthy of marriage. Director Nicholas Renton stages a smart scene soon after the promise of matrimony that has Lucy looking away, her reflection visible in a portrait (perhaps of a distant relative) hung on the wall. The implication is clear: she, haunted by tradition, is turning into a ghost herself; a person of no substance.
This would be fine by the bossy Cecil. One of his earliest compliments to her is that she reminds him of a figure Leonardo would paint, thus reducing this woman of flesh, bone and soul into a lifeless image. She is an object to him; something to have around to look pretty and improve his own image. This is putting a bit too cynical of a spin on their relationship, as later they both confess their love, but Cecil´s character trait remains accurate, and astutely portrayed by the filmmakers, nonetheless.
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