The most successful adaptation of an EM Forster novel to date. Vigorously shot and immaculately set, it starts in 1910 when the fates of the conventional Wilcox family and the free-thinking Schlegels begin to intertwine. Several threads of the plot are already in motion when Mrs Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave) leaves her house, Howards End, to the older Miss Schlegel (Emma Thompson) with whom she has developed a warm friendship. Because her wishes are written in pencil, and have no weight in law, the Wilcoxes decide to burn them, setting in motion a momentous, often tragic sequence of events that need never have happened. All this is related in terms of some feisty dialogue by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, intelligent stuff that sounds like the conversation of real people. Given this impetus, the players rise to the occasion. Anthony Hopkins' excellence under such circumstances tends to be taken for granted, but Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter are both better than one could possibly have imagined, and James Wilby, clearly relishing playing a nasty piece of work, is a more effective actor than heretofore. Tony Pierce-Roberts' mobile camera-work makes the most of the settings, too, from the countryside, through St Pancras Station, to the dusty, cavernous offices of an insurance company. Thompson's Oscar was richly deserved.

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