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.
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.