A ROOM WITH A VIEW (1985) **1/2 In all fairness, this isn't the kind of story that appeals to me much. In my opinion, none of the characters have any idea what they're doing. This bourgeois mentality-respectability and such, marrying someone because of your mother-makes no damn sense to me at all. If I was behind the camera I would have followed around the wild[er] novelist, Judi Dench, because she seems where all the action-such as it is-is at. And I would have missed the subtleties of society that I find more annoying than endearing. It's all well-paced in that social Prozac manner, which leaves me plenty of time to think on why E. M. Forster was the only contemporary novelist that Truman Capote had kind (or anything other than brilliantly acerbic) words for. They may have been friends, but I think it's more along the lines of....Forster apparently (assuming the film is relatively faithful and reflective) spent a lot of time setting up semi-witty lines, to the point where their impact is something more. The gentility of it all couldn't compare to Capote's lightning bolts from the hell of what poured from his consciousness on those occasions he deigned set pen to paper....Forster is a writer to whom Capote had no fear of comparison. The film: Helena Bonham Carter emotes beautifully, which is the way that the fundamental communications are sustained in such things, and all of the actors are good: compare and contrast the emotions of the dumped Daniel-Day Lewis with that of a boozed up casanova shot down in a dive by a particularly appealing trophy...humanity may not be as varied as we like to pretend. So the acting's great, it looks and develops as it should, it's just not my cup of tea. If you're into this sort of thing you'll love it, if you're not it lacks the passion to surmount that particular obstacle.
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