Avril enchanté

"My child, my sister, dream

How sweet all things would seem

Were we in that kind land to live together,

And there love slow and long,

There love and die among

Those scenes that image you, that sumptuous weather."

Charles Baudelaire

Based on the novel by Elizabeth Von Arnim, "Enachanted April" can be described in one sentence – it takes place in the early 1920s when four London women, four strangers decide to rent a castle in Italy for the month of April. It is the correct description but it will not prepare you for the fact that "Enchanted April" - an ultimate "feel good" movie is perfection of its genre. Lovely and sunny, tender and peaceful, kind and magical, it is like a ray of sun on your face during springtime when you want to close your eyes and smile and stop this moment of serene happiness and cherish it forever. This is the movie that actually affected my life. I watched it during the difficult times when I was lost, unhappy and very lonely, when I had to deal with the sad and tragic events and to come to terms with some unflattering truth about myself. It helped me to regain my optimism and hope that anything could be changed and anything is possible. I had promised to myself then that no matter what, I would pull myself out of misery and self-pity and I would appreciate every minute of life - with its joy and its sadness...I promised myself that I would go to Italy and later that year I did and I was not alone.

Charming, enchanting, and heartwarming, "Enchanted April" is one of the best movies ever made and my eternal love. This little film is a diamond of highest quality.

Had a bad day? Dog bit the mailman? Car wouldn't start? People got on your nerves? Then refresh yourself with a delightful experience.

Two women decide to pool their resources in answer to an ad for a month's rental of a villa in Italy. Due to financial circumstances, two other women join them. Two have humdrum marital lives; one is an elderly woman who prefers to live in the past; the fourth is a wealthy and beautiful woman wholly jaded by life.

As the spell of the villa permeates their spirits, each grows in her own way and is uplifted in her outlook. This also changes the people in their lives who have visited them. As they leave you know the magic of the villa will remain with them...and you will find your outlook altered, for the better. A delightfully uplifting movie!

This movie works like a tonic to make one realize what is important. Even the act of watching it is soothing. The four central characters are all women of means living in relative comfort but their lives lack passion and significance. A holiday to Italy inspires them to relax and reassess their lives, something so many of us need and never do.

Lotty (Josie Lawrence) discovers an ad in the newspaper announcing an Italian castle available to let for the month of April. She implores her neighbor, Rose (Miranda Richardson), to invest in the trip so that together they might find happiness. Lawrence and Richardson beautifully portray compliant wives who are defined by their husbands, homes and obligations. Their body language and speech are so repressed at the beginning of the film. I found myself thinking that one or both of them will crack if they do not find peace.

To defray the cost of the trip, Lotty and Rose invite two other women to share in the villa rental, an elderly matron (Joan Plowright) and a titled socialite (Polly Walker). Interestingly, both Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline are very fragile, lonely women who have known great loss and mask their pain with cold exteriors. One is trapped by her past while the other is trapped by her beauty. Plowright shines as the brusque outer layers peel away and we discover her heart.

While each actress portrays a traditional female stereotype (Lawrence the daft, eager to please wife, Richardson the puritan, Plowright the hardened dowager, Walker the used up party girl), it does not detract and in fact, includes the viewer as we see something of them in us and vice versa.

For me, the essence of the film occurs when Lotty befriends Mrs. Fisher in a poignant scene. It characterizes the hope that all the women had when they embarked on their journeys. To love and be loved. To be happy with self. To be enchanted by life.

This is a lovely, spirit-restoring movie. From the use of the actual villa that inspired Elizabeth Arngrim to write the novel in the 1920s to the inspired casting, every choice was perfectly right! The quiet joy of this film doesn't stale after repeated viewings. Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson, Polly Walker and Joan Plowright seem to have been born to play these parts! I would dearly love to see Enchanted April released on DVD in a widescreen format.

Nice character development in a pretty cool milieu. Being a male, I'm probably not qualified to totally understand it, but they do a nice job of establishing the restrictive Victorian environment from the start. It isn't as bleak as it really was and the treatment of women was probably even harsher. What makes this go is a wonderful chemistry among the principal characters. Each has their own "thing" that they contend with. Once they come out of the rain and break out of the spider webs, they begin to interact and slowly lose their sense of suspicion. What I enjoyed about this movie is that it didn't go for cheap comedy when it could have. It didn't try to pound a lesson into us. The people who seem utterly without merit are really nicely developed human beings who get to see the light. I did have a little trouble with the Alfred Molina character having such an epiphany so quickly, but, within this world, it needed to happen. Good acting all around with something positive taking place in the lives of some pretty good people.