Beautifully staged, set and costumed, as destinies flit between England and Italy, this is a typical product of early Nineties, prestige, TV-backed cinema in Britain. Yet another adaptation of the work of EM Forster, it's acted with bare competence by such familiar faces in these period dramas as Helena Bonham Carter, Ropert Graves and Judy Davis, and written with tact and some literacy but no inspiration. The pace is stately, for, after all, the piece must run up to the two-hour mark, even though the novella on which it's based is slim indeed. Only Helen Mirren of the cast (and she disappears all too soon) commands our attention in a film which above all lacks any excitement, physical or cerebral.

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