This is everything one could possibly want a modern British period film to be: brilliant, sensitive, perfectly made, enthralling, revealing, informative, stimulating, and inspired. Did I forget anything? Oh yes, the wonderful script, cinematography, editing, costumes, sets, props, and just about anything else you care to name. The director is an inspired Irishman named Thaddeus O'Sullivan. And why has he not won an Oscar and is not making Hollywood blockbusters at a hundred million dollars a pop? Well, because he is too talented and real, that is why. The performances are magnificent and sublime. 2002 was a bumper year for Helena Bonham Carter, when she delivered possibly the two finest performances of her distinguished career. Maybe because she had found personal fulfillment with Tim Burton the year before, it was in 2002 that she made first this film and then 'Till Human Voices Wake Us', in both cases delivering performances which are staggering emotional masterpieces of the acting art. I wish she could stop wasting her time on Harry Potter and get more vehicles like this one. When she was younger, Bonham Carter was not 'sexy'. No man wanted to rip her off the screen and give her a squeeze. She was remote, quizzical, almost 'a funny little thing', despite her amazing talent. By 2002 she was as ripe as a plum, it was all there and oozing out like honey, all that emotion. She may not be a pin-up, but she is what they would call in an old noir movie 'one helluva dame'. (And let's hope she does become Dame Helena one day, for that matter, as she already deserves.) Not to be outdone, her sister is played by Olivia Williams. What a scorching, searing performance that is! She conveys so much on the outside which is concealed on the inside, that one wonders if she had been psychologically involuted specially for this film. What a study this is of sibling rivalries between two sisters! The two actresses seem to have a telepathic communion between them, as when one of them flickers an eyelid, the other winces. If one inhales, the other holds her breath. They were really living this, it was beyond acting. The man caught in the middle between these two lovelies is Paul Bettany, who is perfectly cast, whose performance is perfectly judged, and is delivered with such pervading melancholy and resignation to the Fates that it elevates this tragic love story to Olympian heights. Bettany's versatility was later to be proved when he played Silas in 'The Da Vinci Code', an almost incomprehensible transformation of an actor who here is the very model of a 1930s gent. The costumes are so totally amazing in this film that you want to faint with delight, just looking at them. Where did they get those materials from? How did they do it? This film is a genuine classic, and a model of its kind. It was not until the end credits that I realized I had just seen the screen adaptation of Rosamund Lehmann's novel 'The Echoing Grove', one of her few books I had never got round to reading, though she once told me she believed it to be her best. The film was so emotional and intense that when I saw this it triggered tears, because one of the most traumatic episodes of my entire life was being with Rosamund the day she died in 1990. I arrived to see her, and the woman looking after her left us alone in the house. At first our conversation was normal and lucid, but Rosamund began to go peculiar and fade in and out of consciousness. She started to hold conversations with imaginary people who were appearing to her, especially a young man whom she loved (she was then 89). Rosamund's two great character flaws in her otherwise wonderful personality were female vanity and uncontrollable romantic and sexual passion (as shown in the character played by Helena Bonham Carter). Rosamund was intensely passionate right up to the end, and can literally be said to have been in love on her deathbed, and was straightening her hair and reaching for her lipstick. I felt so desperately uncomfortable being the witness to all these deepest possible intimacies that I have tried for all these years to eradicate it all from my memory, looking at the details as too personal to Rosamund and none of my business. I tried my best to make her comfortable and help her, but after several hours it became clear to me that she was really dying and I had to call for help. She deserved and needed a close friend (as I was only an acquaintance) and of course the doctor. Rosamund was in no pain, but seemed to be being 'called' at last to rejoin her adored daughter Sally, who had died at 24, and whose death caused Rosamund to join the College of Psychic Studies and become a dedicated spiritualist in order to keep in touch with her, which she was convinced she had. And here I was, witness to Rosamund's contact with the spirits right in front of my eyes. I believe it was only four hours after I left the house that Rosamund was dead. The whole subject is so upsetting that I try never to think about it. I really do believe that people should not have curious spectators present at their deaths, however sympathetic they may be, such as myself. They need their friends and loved ones with them. And this did happen in her last moments. I am glad that this film, a perfect testament to Rosamund's amazingly brilliant talent and insights into human emotions, has been rendered on the screen. I do urge all who have a jot of emotion within them to see it, if only to pursue the hidden dynamics of feelings into the innermost recesses of the female heart.

this is the second time that i have seen this movie and it definitely lives up to repeated viewings. at heart the story maybe about an illicit affair of forbidden love, but in reality it seems much more. It lays bare the consequences of the worst betrayals of trust without apportioning blame. all three characters, Madeleine, Dinah and Ricky, are left unsatisfied and the pain that they feel makes the film challenging viewing - it is simply so sad. what i liked most about the story is its time frame, as we weave through fifteen odd years and see the story, or rather the affair through the different perspective of time - it is such a clever technique because our sympathies never rest- we switch allegiance constantly and recognise that for these three people there could be no happy resolution.there is so much else to love about this film, i loved the way the large elegant house, appeared to take on the appearance of Madeleine's state of mind - all bright and happy in the beginning and then grey and sterile at the end.the film does have a fault i would say, though. which is why i have given it 8. i do not like Helena Bonham carters performance. it was partly because both Olivia Williams and Paul Bettany gave such wonderful performances that hers appears forced and insincere. i think that we are meant to like Dinah and see her as colourful and vital - but i didn't believe in her portrayal. she is remarkable at expressing anguish and truly has a beautiful voice when reciting Blake, but i found her garish costumes and brazen comments, unconvincing and unnatural. she grated on me because i really needed to believe that this woman was worthy of Ricky's obsessional love and i didn't. having said that i still recommend this movie, if only really because of its deep and intelligent exploration of the different types of love.

Why can't the private sector deliver sleepwalking junk-TV like this? Why does one of the few surviving public broadcasters on earth have to waste resources on such mediocre pap? The script should have been thrown out by BBC Drama execs on sight. It breaks all the rules. No hero, no heroine, no love interest, no sub-plot, no climax in the third act. It should have been binned right away. Only a director named "Thaddeus" could have been persuaded to take it on. Not one of the characters is even slightly plausible, and only their removal into some remote pre-war era gives them some spurious credibility. The working class --- er, that's 90 per cent of the UK population at the time --- is airbrushed out. Even the Second World War is reduced to the status of a prop and a 'deus ex machina'. Dinah and Madeleine obviously should have been swapped: Olivia Williams is irresistibly sexy even when playing a frigid wife, while the squat, pinch-faced Bonham-Carter has to plaster on the make-up to persuade her 40 years to look more like 30 (and definitely not 20). Paul Bettany struggles to make a manipulable goon and upper-middle class twit seem of consequence. His deeply unsympathetic behaviour and unmotivated, pathetic end (walking brainlessly into a Nazi bombing raid) plead for a well-deserved tearing up and binning. Rather than committing suicide, his character would have bought all the sex he wanted from the millions of sex-trade workers available in that era. Why throw up everything for a bisexual hippy? All three main characters seem to be desperately searching around for a sub-plot to give their lives meaning. Olivia Williams's agent should be shot.

First off, let me admit that I didn't make it to the end of this film. I love costume drama, I'm a fan of Helena Bonham Carter, but this film was too slow even for me. Yes, it had its moments of visual beauty, but the story dragged and the characters were unengaging. Paul Bettany plays - or at least recites the lines of - Rickie, object of desire for two women. One woman is his wife, Madeleine, played by Olivia Williams. She's the sensible, more conventional one. We know this because she says very little and grows flowers. Helena Bonham Carter plays the arty, bohemian sister, Dinah - easily identifiable as a bohemian type because her clothes don't fit properly, her hair is uncombed and she wears too much dark eye make-up. Yes, it's that stereotypical. I was so disappointed. I expected much better of this film, but it was formulaic and unconvincing. I left not long after the affair between Dinah and Rickie was discovered by Madeleine. So she knew about it. Yes, we knew she knew. But when I couldn't find it in my heart to care what she did about it, I knew it was time to give up on this film. It could, however, be marketed as the ultimate cure for insomnia.