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CALL TO NATURE: ENCHANTED APRIL, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

© Sean Gallagher

Being the product of an urban and suburban environment for all of my life, I've never been someone who's felt the call of nature. I agree our nature's resources should be preserved for the good of everyone, and it's certainly beautiful to look at if I happen to be walking around it, or see it while passing through, or watching it on TV or whatnot. In film, however, too often nature is used just for us to say, "Ooh, look at the pretty scenery," rather than for any dramatic purpose, and while that satisfies other people, it bores me. Mike Newell's ENCHANTED APRIL falls into that category, while Robert Redford's A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT actually manages to use nature right, and be a good movie as well.

Newell and star Miranda Richardson had previously worked together in 1985's DANCE WITH A STRANGER, about the last woman hanged in Britain. That was a monotonous and relentlessly dark movie, while this is a relentlessly "Masterpiece Theater"-ish movie. That is, it wants to do nothing to offend, but be tasteful as possible. Unfortunately, as I pointed out in my review of HOWARDS END, that doesn't always make a good movie.

In 1922 Britain, Lotte (Josie Lawrence) is unhappily married to Mellersh(Alfred Molina), a lawyer who basically sees her as his servant. She spots an ad in the paper advertising a villa in Italy for lease for the month of April, and desperate for happiness, decides she wants that. By coincidence, she happens to spot Rose, a dowdy housewife married to Frederick (Jim Broadbent, a novelist who lives the high life, also looking at the ad. The two bond over this and their shared misery, and decide to rent the place. To share expenses, they manage to convince two other women to go on the trip. One is Mrs. Fisher (Joan Plowright), a widowed curmudgeon who lives in the past, when she lived among the upper crust of society. The other is Lady Caroline (Polly Walker), an heiress who is tired of hobnobbing with the upper crust and wants a break.

Naturally, while Rose and Lotte are fairly close from the start, Lady Caroline and Mrs. Fisher don't warm up to them right away; Lady Caroline is aloof, while Mrs. Fisher is dismissive. But once they get to Italy, the scenery helps everybody warm up. They not only become friendlier towards each other, but towards life itself. Even the men they've come to Italy to escape from aren't immune. Mellersh comes first, starts to see his wife as a human being for the first time, and reveals himself as a human being for the first time as well. Frederick comes later, and while he knows Lady Caroline from the party circuit, starts to notice his wife more. Finally, George (Michael Kitchen), the painter who owns the villa, comes to call, and he strikes up a friendship with Lady Caroline.