The widowed Lilia (Helen Mirren) goes to stay in Italy, leaving her young daughter in the care of her rather snooty in-laws. While there, she falls in love with a much younger man, and marries him, to the shock of her relatives back in the UK. So far so good, but despite odd moments of mild amusement, the story descends, from this point, into tragedy and violence. I haven’t read the novel… and am not inspired to do so.

At the start I was reminded of ‘Room with a View’, a film which I very much enjoyed, also based on a novel by EM Forster. This one has some of the same cast, rather confusingly, and they do well – but in addition to the depressing storyline, the sound quality on our DVD was poor and it was hard to make out some of the conversation. Worse, there were parts in Italian with no subtitling on the DVD.

The scenery is pretty, and there are one or two amusing moments – but on the whole, this is not one that I intend to watch again.