Welcome to another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!
Today I'm traveling back to the 1980s, and from the 1980s back to the turn of the century, via James Ivory's 1986 romance film A Room with a View, starring Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Maggie Smith and Daniel Day-Lewis. Based on E.M. Forster's 1908 novel, ARWAV tells the story of Lucy Honeychurch, a young Englishwoman who meets and becomes interested in a free-spirited fellow countryman named George Emerson while on holiday in Florence. The two share a conversation and an awkward kiss, but Lucy's older cousin Charlotte witnesses the incident and swears Lucy to secrecy. Back in England Lucy agrees to marry an uptight fop named Cecil Vyse, but things become complicated when George and his father move into the neighborhood, and Lucy must decide which gentleman's company she'd prefer.
This film was released to universal acclaim and was nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, and, well.....I don't get it. A Room with a View felt to me like what popcorn filmgoers think of when they think "stuffy award-winning period piece." The source material was meant to be kind of a satirical look at well-to-do British society in the early 1900s, but for me the film didn't convey much of this humor at all, aside from Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal being amusing; he's a hopelessly prim and proper dandy who isn't even able to kiss a girl without knocking the glasses off his face. But other than that I didn't feel much of anything throughout this film.
The central romantic plot involves Lucy apparently feeling stifled by her traditional English lifestyle and being drawn to the progressive George Emerson and his romantic frankness. But I don't feel like the film got either of those things across at all. To me Lucy didn't seem all that unhappy, she was just going with the flow, and I didn't feel any chemistry at all between her and George (and certainly not between her and Cecil, but that was to be expected). George twice kisses her during their courtship and both times it just comes across as clumsy rather than passionate, nor does Lucy seem all that impressed. Seemed to me like she'd rather just go off on her own for a while and experience life, like her novelist friend Eleanor Lavish. When we finally get the payoff to all this hand-wringing it just feels obligatory rather than earned. I get what the film was going for but I don't think it achieved it very well at all. If we don't feel any heat between the romantic leads, what are we even doing here?
I wasn't invested in the characters or particularly immersed in the setting; it often felt like I was watching a TV movie rather than a theatrical one. The performances were all fine, Daniel Day-Lewis stole the show for me and I think he would've been fun to watch as either suitor. Aside from that though, A Room with a View is as lifeless as the prudish folks who serve as its subject.
I give the film ** out of ****.
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