"Enchanted April"
                Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister
              On "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM Tampa, FL.
                       September 26, 1992

   "Enchanted April" is a film you may have seen advertised on
television; it has been playing around the country for eight
weeks now and is even showing up on the lists of top box office
draws.   But Tampa has yet to get a glimpse of it.  It has been
playing down in Sarasota under the asupices of the Sarasota Film
Society and since they also bring films into Tampa and Pinellas
theaters, I'm guessing that it will make an appearance in the Bay
area shortly.  Based on good reports from friends in other cities
and intrigued by the lineup of four outstanding actresses in
leading roles, I ventured to Sarasota the other day to see
"Enchanted April."

    Imagine a cold, wet, grey London winter's day in the 1920s;
it's so raw you can imagine the chillblains forming.  A rather
dowdy-looking young matron spies an ad on the back of someone's
newspaper in a bus for a castle in Italy with wisteria and
sunshine for rent for the month of April.  Lotte Wilkins (Josie
Lawrence) springs into action.  She mounts an impassioned
campaign to convince Rose Arbuthnot (Miranda Richardson), whom
she hardly knows except by sight, that the two of them should join
forces and rent the castle.  Is Lotte crazy?  No, but she's
slightly clairvoyant and can see that Rose is unhappy in her
marriage and needs some beauty and warmth in her life as badly as
Lotte needs to get away from her controlling and demanding husband.

     So these two middle-class thirtysomethingish London
housewives rent a castle in Italy for a month.  But they can't
afford it so they advertise for two other women to share it with
them.  Who they get is a formidable and domineering older woman,
Mrs. Fisher (played with verve by Joan Plowright), who's still
living among the dead Victorians whose photographs line her
study, and young, rich, gorgeous flapper-about-town Lady
Caroline Dester (played by Polly Walker) who needs to get away
from her frantic party-girl existence and put her life back
together again.

    So off they go, this odd quartet, to Springtime in Italy. The
castle is utterly breathtaking in its beauty and gradually each
of these women is changed by the spell this idyllic setting casts
upon them.  Through various plot twists the two husbands and the
man who owns the castle all show up and are themselves also
transformed.

   For me as a feminist the film started out promising as it
appeared that these women, each in her own way, were finding ways to
break free from their societally imposed roles and to look after
their own needs.  Thus the film appeared to be a sort of 1920s
version of "Shirley Valentine," but that hope was disappointed
because there's really no motivation given for the changes that
occur in the women or in their husbands except being transformed
by the beauty of the place.  It's true the women all become
radiant and loving and the men do so as well, but you have to
wonder what happens to them when they all get back to London.
Are these changes permanent ones?  I guess I really didn't
believe it.  I'm with the ancient poet--was it Virgil?--who
said something like "A change of sky, not a change of soul is
yours when you cross the sea."

   Still there are some great moments in this film. One of my
favorite scenes is a silent one in which Rose is lying in
the sun on the beach and a lizard crawls over her head and arm;
instead of doing the stereotypical female thing of jumping up and
screaming she lies perfectly still except for opening, and then
closing again, one big blue eye as the lizard continues its
journey across her body.

   This is a gentle, charming, feel-good film with great camera
work, lovely scenery, and fine acting even if the screenplay,
based on a novel by Elisabeth Von Arnim, is a wispy affair. It
won't bowl you over, perhaps, but it's definitely entertaining.

For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women
and Film.