"Enchanted April" reinforces the appealing notion that a trip to Italy, specifically to a medieval castle with a glorious view of the surrounding countryside and the sea, will cure all ills. The voyagers are four thoroughly incompatible Englishwomen who all discover, to their surprise, that travel can indeed be a life changing experience. Each changes for the better by the time this soothing, picturesque film arrives at what is quite literally a rosy ending.
"Enchanted April" is based on a 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Armin. But it actually unfolds on what has come to be thought of as Merchant-Ivory territory. The ladies are well bred, the scenery is lovely and the dialogue is polished and polite.
The principals here are the tremulous Lottie (Josie Lawrence) and the meek and dysphoric Rose (Miranda Richardson), who are cowed by overbearing husbands and join forces to answer a newspaper advertisement offering the Italian castle for rent. Wisteria and sunshine are the main selling points mentioned in the ad; the film similarly depends on those attractions, but it also has a welcome element of wit. Joan Plowright, uproariously funny as Mrs. Fisher, a commanding older woman who becomes Rose and Lottie's unlikely roommate, booms through the film dropping the names of literary eminences she once knew through the connections of her distinguished father. "Husbands were taken seriously as the only real obstacles to sin" she says, in a typical comment. And they have a fourth who is far less interesting. The Italian atmosphere does them all a world of good, and they emerge better people at the end of it. Lovely film that makes one want to immediately book a month in a house with a view of the water and rethink one's life.
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