First off I didn't really like the movie much. There wasn't much story in it though the introduction piqued my interest and made me expect something much better. After seeing the ending I wondered if there might be a second part because it ended so abruptly and so poorly. But what really upset me was the story's historical ignorance and it was a huge one. Consider that the story begins in Florence, Italy in 1922. Are you OK with that? Ten years later she finds herself in Florence with an Italian man she met when the story first began - 1922. Near this last scene we see the man the woman in the story married lying dead on some battlefield which would have happened certainly after 1922 and before 1932. She even tells the Italian she lost her husband in the war. What war was England involved in between 1922 and 1932? By the looks of the battlefield, it looks like the trenches of WWI but that war ended in 1918, right? Perhaps in the editing phase of the movie, whoever entered the date 1922 meant to enter 1912 instead? 1922 it couldn't have been. The movie was pretty bad anyway, so I suppose it really doesn't matter.

When I saw this TV adaptation I enjoyed it in its own right, not having read the novel, but having now read it I must say the additions in Andrew Davies' script, which hadn't offended me in themselves as they did some other viewers, now seem to me to be rather silly and to contravene Forster without improving on him. For one thing, Davies insists on the class distinction between the lovers, but Forster makes it clear that this is not so great: Lucy's family is unaristocratic and has only been admitted to better society by a geographical accident. Then, Davies insists on the homosexual inclination of two characters, which is not only to read between the lines but to go beyond what Forster wrote. He might or might not have seen that as a part of their make-up; it wouldn't matter to the story either way; but I think it's safe to say Forster's Rev. Beebe would never have gone looking for "action" in Italy as Davies' does (or as Davies himself does through the character), and in any case this is irrelevant to the aspect the character presents in the novel; and to use the descriptions Beebe and Forster's other characters give of Cecil Vyse as hints toward his sexual tendency is to misread them; Forster has a different and more interesting view of his nature, and leaves him in, one might say, a world all his own. Finally, the epilogue, which is derived from Forster's speculation on what might happen to the characters "after" the novel, is irrelevant for just that reason: it lies outside the scope of the novel, which is complete in itself.I do think, however, that this adaptation has a couple of things in its favor, but perhaps not greatly in its favor, over the theatrical film. The novel is a comic novel--a comedy of manners, if the term may be applied to a novel--that reads lightly and trippingly, although it deals with the serious subjects of love and self-knowledge. Its happy idea is something like this: even a fleeting kiss can reveal essential truth and by its light expose all competing falsehoods. The first film was rather too grand for its source, like a vellum-bound gold-tipped limited edition; this version is more to scale. However, it too veers away from the comic, dropping much of the (apparently) trivial chatter while not only retaining but expanding on most of the (seemingly) more serious exchanges. Here Lucy, the character who receives wisdom, seems more accurately cast, being of more indeterminate class (and affections), younger, and more unworldly, though still not quite young enough and not quite the Lucy of the novel, since the script doesn't put her through all the paces Forster does. However, most of the secondary characters are miscast: Sinead Cusack might profitably have traded roles with Elizabeth McGovern, and Timothy West with Timothy Spall, and brought greater weight, as in the novel, to the roles of the mother and the spiritual mentor, making Lucy's changes of direction more credible. I think now that this adaptation, while enjoyable in itself, shared Lucy's condition: it needed a little spiritual guidance too.

This new adaptation of Forster's classic seems bizarrely beholden to Merchant Ivory's more successful film. Unfortunately it has little new to add (and at that, only something spurious) and, indeed, steals much from the film - including things that weren't even in the novel.Like Merchant Ivory, this adaptation plays up the heady romance, but lacks that film's moments of rapture. Writer Andrew Davies' decision to tell the story in flashback was bizarre and unnecessary - adding narrative twists that really did not help the drama in any way.Performances were largely disappointing. However, Elaine Cassidy breathed real life into Lucy Honeychurch. On the other hand, Sophie Thompson and Sinead Cussack both chose to base their characters on the performances given by Maggie Smith and Judi Dench in the film. As such they came off as poor imitations. Other performances were underwhelming, particularly the usually great Laurence Fox who both underplayed and seemed wholly unable to convince as an upper class Edwardian.

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.