Mike Newell's adaptation of Elizabeth von Arnim's moves at a more generous pace than the 1935 version, allowing excellent performances from Miranda Richardson and Joan Plowright to flourish.
Mike Newell's adaptation of Elizabeth von Arnim's moves at a more generous pace than the 1935 version, allowing excellent performances from Miranda Richardson and Joan Plowright to flourish.
Previously filmed in 1935 with Ann Harding, Enchanted April, a romantic novel by Elizabeth, was remade in 1992. The first film skips along superficially at 66 minutes: the second, directed by the always intriguing Mike Newell, runs 101 minutes, allowing for richer characterizations and a bottomless reserve of brilliant dialogue. Two cloistered, married English women (Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson) impulsively rent an Italian villa and embark upon a vacation without their spouses. They are
joined by two other ladies: the high-flown aging widow Joan Plowright, and elegant upper-crust beauty Polly Walker) whom they've never met. Under the spell of an exotic new location, the foursome are in for quite a few life-altering experiences, many of them amusing, and not a few very surprising. Impeccably accurate in its recreation of European manners and mores in the 1920s, Enchanted April is sheer bliss from fade-in to fade-out. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
In a raucous movie summer, this is a film for those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine, and a recollection of a time when women and movies could be purveyors of enchantment.
The ladies are well bred, the scenery is lovely and the dialogue is polished and polite. It helps that the same villa in Portofino where Miss von Armin wrote the novel has been used to fine effect as the film's principal setting.
It would seem from a spate of films lately that the English can only find their warmer, truer selves abroad -- usually in Italy. Enchanted April takes this familiar path, but traipses along with charm and glory, as if for the very first time.
The whole thing seems like it was dreamed up during a sleepy afternoon by the Italian seaside, and is guaranteed to put viewers into a similarly soporific state.
It reminded me of the introspective but otherwise soft-hitting stories that my mother reads in her monthly book club. It's a rich film, but not the kind of rich that I like.
Thematically, Mike Newell's film is similar to A Room With a View, focusing on the liberating impact of an Italian vacation on repressed, downtrodden Brit femmes, well acted by Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson and Polly Walker.
The disc's sole special feature is a full-length audio commentary by director Mike Newell and producer Ann Scott, unless you count a collection of movie trailers.
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