Warm, Heartfelt, and just Great

There is not a lot to say that hasn't been said about this movie. It rates in my top 5 all time favorites. I have everything from the Die Hard collection to Godzilla, but this is the DVD I'm waiting for. I like art-house, and pretty much anything that is good, and that has style. This movie is great and has a lot of style. The characters have been brought back through time, the acting is superb, the scenery is stunning. The opening scenes portray a dreary England: Dismal weather and almost desperate people. All that changes in the second part of the film. The characters find a new zest for life and leave Italy much happier people. Only a machine could not be warmed, even a little, by this movie.
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A serene escape to a gracious era

Four very different women decide to escape their everyday lives and have a vacation in an exotic locale, in this turn-of-the (20th) century movie. In a lighthearted but meaningful way, the movie interweaves two main themes. One is getting a different perspective on your daily petty annoyances when you are physically removed from familiar surroundings and people. The second theme is friendships between (sometimes unlikely) women. The costumes are ethereally lovely and the pace of the movie speaks to a gracious bygone era. There's not much "action" here. The tone of the movie is very relaxing. This is a movie with inter-generational appeal, a lovely finale to a summer family get-together at grandma's.

Perfect!

In my top ten of Most Beloved Movies, this one rates very, very high. It's a movie about unhappy people. They are unhappy because they've closed their minds, indeed their whole beings, from being happy. Lottie feels her husband doesn't truly love her, and as a consequence refuses to love him. Rose disapproves of her husbands work (he writes racy novels) and tries to lose herself in her Church and Helping The Poor. Her husband, as a consequence drifts further and further away from her and casts roving eyes elsewhere. Rose and Lottie meet over a newspaper ad about a castle in Italy which is for rent for the month of April. To cut costs they advertise for two other women to join their holiday, away from home and husbands. The two other women are mrs Fisher, an old crusty lady who seemingly has no friends, just the memories of beloved and literary friends of the past, who've all died, and Lady Caroline Dexter, a raving beauty who tires of all the men that are always fighting for her attentions (whilst she still grieves for a man who died in the War - the First World War, that is)
Any American movie, to which even we in Europe are starting to get conditioned to, would give Lottie and Rose Italian lovers, or would insist they'd divorce their husbands. What makes this movie so delightful is that none of this happens. All four women end up very happy, not because of some outside reason but because they themselves open up to the people around them. They find out that, in order to be loved, one should be lovable herself. And it turns out that the menfolk are not the horrid, cold or roving monsters they were made out to be. Rose's husband, confronted with a Rose who doesn't reject him or his livelihood, practically throws himself in her arms. Lotti's husband will never be a dashing charmer, but he, in his own quit way, does love her, finds her beautiful. "Why couldn't I see it before?", he asks her. Mrs Fisher bursts open and finds out that all her old friends have one great disadvantage: they are all dead. "I want the living", she decides. And Caroline? Caroline finds somebody who doesn't care about superficial beauty and is finally freed to love. Each and every one of the characters blossom. Yes, Italy is beautiful after dreary London, but what really changes is not the scenery but the way the characters think and percieve themselves. They are no longer victims of their own lives, but actors. They free themselves to love and to be loving. Every time I need to be cheered up, this movie does the trick.