Review of Where Angels Fear to Tread

Another period dress film, this one really quite Merchant-Ivory, even though it isn't actually theirs. Edwardians going off to Italy, that sort of thing. It's based on E M Forster's first novel, which looks like it was quite good, though the film isn't. It's stilted, and the emotional and moral universe of the people involved is incomprehensible - as distant as Saudi Arabia.

A posh family's widowed daughter-in-law (Helen Mirren playing ditzy) goes off to Italy and the family sends a chaperone (Helena Bonham-Carter, looking surprisingly ugly and dowdy). But the chaperoning doesn't go well, because she sends a letter saying that the daughter-in-law is going to marry an inappropriate Italian aristocrat and calling for help. In fact it's gone worse, because when the son arrives she's already married, and not to an aristocrat but to a dentist's son.

And so on, with lots of Edwardian-era racial stereotypes and class prejudice. The film is criticising rather than sharing these, but it still feels uncomfortable and hard to enjoy.

Watched on Amazon Prime.