Cookbook challenge

Found out about a neat arthouse cinema that shows a lot of older films & restorations presented by different academics or film enthusiasts. As part of a series on fashion in film, they had a one-night-only screening of the 4k restoration of A Room With a View. Since it's been over a decade since I last saw that film, I decided to check it out. There was a quick presentation at the beginning about Edwardian women's fashion and the rapidly changing styles of dress. In particular, women's enthusiasm for tennis spurred a desire for more practical athletic wear. The presentation was short and sweet, and then we got into the film.

Merchant and Ivory really knew what they were doing, huh? It was and remains an absolutely beautiful film. I mean, I'm sure you could just stick a camera on a roof in Florence and get some pretty images, but everything here is so beautifully composed and edited. It has to be: the story doesn't work if you aren't overwhelmed by Italy's beauty. The performances are also great, of course. I'd forgotten how funny this movie is, but it really is full of laugh-out loud moments, both heavy-handed (the pond scene...) and more subtle (Maggie Smith's supposedly delicate but incredibly obvious manipulations).

The only thing I don't particularly like would probably be hard to resolve. As an adaptation of Forster's novel, it is excellent; the humour comes through more clearly and the use of music as an analogy for Lucy's inner state is easier to understand. However, because we don't see Lucy's interior world in the same way we do as a novel, parts of it fall flat. This is supposed to be a story of her discovering her inner desires, shaping her aesthetic and philosophical views, but in the film she comes across as overly influenced by George rather than truly coming into her own.