If you enjoyed "A Room With a View" or are a fan of the "Masterpiece Theater"-style of British drama shown frequently on PBS, then "Where Angels Fear to Tread" is for you.
On the other hand, if you feel those shows are stodgy, that it's more exciting to watch paint dry, you'll probably want to look elsewhere.
"Where Angels Fear to Tread" is based on an E.M. Forster story about Britons in Italy and features Helena Bonham Carter in the cast, so it's natural that fans may anticipate another "Room With a View." While "Angels" isn't quite up to that standard, it is, on its own level, quite entertaining, wickedly funny and loaded with unexpected plot twists.
This is a tough film to analyze without giving too much away, so I'll only lightly skim over plot points. The joys in a movie like this are, after all, in the discovery process.
The story begins just after the turn of the century, with a rich widow named Lilia (Helen Mirren) leaving London for a tour of Italy. Her traveling companion is a younger woman, Caroline (Bonham Carter).
Lilia describes herself as Caroline's chaperone, but in truth it is Lilia who needs the chaperone. She is seduced by the country — and perhaps by a specific young Italian as well. In fact, it isn't long before Lilia sends word home to her stuffy in-laws that she is engaged to marry a much-younger Italian peasant, Gino (Giovanni Guidelli).
This news, naturally, sends her mother-in-law into a tizzy, so she dispatches her milquetoast son Philip (Rupert Graves) to Italy so he can assess the situation. And what he discovers quite shocks him.
When he returns home there is some nasty family plotting, and ultimately, Philip and his horrid sister Harriet (Judy Davis) are again sent to Italy, which ultimately leads to tragedy and confrontations between several key characters.
"Where Angels Fear to Tread" is a most compelling film, rich in character and fascinating in detail. The performances are uniformly good, but the standouts are Bonham Carter, as the repressed maiden caught in the middle of all this; Davis, as a real shrew, hilarious in her self-absorbed tantrums; and Graves, who is almost as repressed as Bonham Carter but who changes as the film progresses.
Director Charles Sturridge ("A Handful of Dust") and his two co-screenwriters have filled the film with many well-staged, memorable moments — in particular a scene at an opera that is both revealing and hilarious.
Kudos, as well, to Michael Coulter's lush cinematography and Rachel Portman's lovely music.
"Where Angels Fear to Tread" is slow and deliberate, but the film is so absorbing that the audience won't mind. We get all too few movies as involving as this one — and as such, it is highly recommended.
It is rated PG for some violence, sex and profanity, none of it explicit or excessive.