Enchanted April

A film about four women who travel from England to Italy in the early 1920s. Lotty sees an advertisement in the paper: a castle in Italy to let for April. She cannot afford it alone; she persuades Rose, who was looking at the same advertisement, and they find two more women to share the cost. One is an elderly and difficult woman, the other a well-known young socialite tired of everyone's attention. All four are escaping. Lotty and Rose from their husbands, the others from their own lives. The film does not expect anything to happen in Italy. The narrative simply shows rest, sun, and people softening over time. The husbands arrive later and the matter becomes the rebuilding of the marriages. The source is Elizabeth von Arnim's novel of 1922. It was shot in Italy, in a real castle near Portofino. Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright and Polly Walker are in the cast; Plowright was Oscar-nominated. Mike Newell directed. A pleasant choice for anyone who likes quiet period films and warm character-driven storytelling. For a viewer wanting incident, almost nothing happens across the film, and that is deliberate.