A film which pleases the eye, if not the soul, this is reminiscent of a Claude Monet painting - beautiful to look at, but hardly passionately afire. The production/direction team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory seems to have taken it upon itself to present the English at their most English in this triple Oscar-winning adaptation of EM Forster's rather fey novel. It is a soporifically gentle film about manners, but the viewer clamours for some outrageous behaviour and it takes a street fight from some unruly Italians to convince young Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) that there is more to life than poetry, decorum and cucumber sandwiches. When a headstrong Englishman (Julian Sands) plants a kiss on her unsullied lips it's regarded as an apocalyptic scandal. Subsequently, more and more social restraints are subtly breached by a superb British cast.

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