Engel und Narren

Where Angels Fear To Tread, a fine novel in its own right, is transferred to the big screen with wit and a painter's eye by the masterful Charles Sturridge. Against a backdrop rich in Edwardian England's own brand of stuffy propriety, we watch cultures and mores clash, with poignant, and occasionally hilarious results. Judy Davis delivers one of my top ten moments on film, a snit of epic self-righteousness, in a memorable scene at the opera. The beauty of the film lies in its fluid and compassionate depiction of the wrongheadedness and confusion which ensue when foreign travelers pack their own narrow values next to the toothpaste, granting themselves permission to brandish them in the face of every long-suffering local along the way. Luckily for us, the film is populated by a believable group of finely drawn characters, played by actors who simply could not be better cast.

I believe I've seen every film adaptation of Forster's work, and I have to say that this is probably the worst of the lot. It has none of the charm of "A Room With a View", and none of the poignancy of "Howards End". Instead, it's a long, slogging story with shrill characters that I could not muster a shred of empathy for. Many of the characters (particularly the elderly Mrs. Harriton and Harriet) are played so far over-the-top that they border on farce. The character of Gino is underdeveloped, which makes the way some characters come to feel about him ring utterly false.

Forster was a homosexual, an Italophile, and scornful of Edwardian British mores and (perceived) hypocrisy. I have no problem with any of those things, but in this, his first novel, it's as if his main intention was to telegraph these things to the audience, and he sets his characters up to that end, but it's never convincing as the natural actions of real humans. If you must watch it, enjoy the Tuscan scenery while you can, but you may want to fast forward through the second-half. For completists only.

The story is so tragic that this should be a hard-core drama, and parts of it are very poignant, but I also laughed hysterically. This is mainly due to Judy Davis' performance which is so priggish and delightful. Graves and Bonham-Carter played brother and sister in 'A Room With A View' and their chemistry carries over into this film quite well. The music is enchanting. All the way around, a great film.

I was almost more impressed by Charles Storridge's treatment of E,M,Forster than by James Ivory's, since everything is perfect in this film: the acting, the story, the drama, the photography, perhaps most outstanding of all, and the composition of the film building up to an inevitable dramatic climax, turning the enchantingly idyllic scenery into relentless disaster and tragedy. It's acrtually all about a child, while the crook here is a lady, who can't control herself. It's true, the Italian husband also runs out of control sometimes, while Rupert Graves is a consistent paragon of diplomacy. Helena Bonham Carter is the one of them who actually succeeds in understanding the Italians, while all the others are hopelessly at a loss in getting entangled in inexricable complications of the Italian mentality. Helen Mirren is the rich English lady of a mature age who gets hopelessly mixed up with a young Italian man, which triggers the drama, as her family gets more and more upset about it and acts more and more awkwardly to do something about it. It is in fact a shocker, but invaluable for charting cultural clashes between the English and the Italian way, and although you can understand Helen Mirren's initiative and accept her risk, one has to agree with the others whether it actually was so very wise. I haven't read Forster's novel, but it ought to be one of his most interesting ones.

Such is the credo of a trio of Edwardian English gentry who travel to Italy to save a new born baby from the clutches of its Italian father upon the death of its English mother. "Where Angels Fear to Tread" is an excellent film in need of a story. A well crafted, well acted, well directed period piece (circa 1906), the film peers deeply into the marginally interesting group of characters, their relationships and idiosyncrasies, and their difficulty bridging the English/Italian culture gap. Unfortunately this tedious work only seems to get interesting about the time credits roll and one is left wondering what happened to the on screen "To Be Continued" declaration. An okay watch for those into the subtleties of European period films with little to offer all others.