Currently Watching - A Room With a View (1986)

I love that TCM has been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Merchant Ivory Films this month but it makes me feel old to hear that something that began in 1961 is celebrating 50 years. JESUS!!!!
Anyway, I am a sucker for these films. I just love period pieces. Give me a British cast shot on location and I am there!

Miss Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham-Carter) from the English hamlet of Windy Corner is on holiday in Italy with her much older cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith). Charlotte is conventionally English, with an extremely restrictive personality and tends to get her way by expressing her emotions to manipulate others. Lucy has been brought up in an upper class but loving and easygoing household, and had fewer inhibitions, which creates a strong tension between Charlotte and herself. They are in contrast with the more free-thinking and free-spirited backdrop of Italy. At a small pensione Lucy meets an aging Mr. Emerson (Denholm Elliott) and his handsome, philosophical son, George (Julian Sands), as well as other personalities such as Reverend Beebe, the two Miss Alans, and the author Miss Eleanor Lavish, who becomes friends with Charlotte. These men, although also English, represent the forward-thinking ideals of the turn-of-the-century, seeking to leave behind the repression and caution that was the norm in Victorian times. At first, the two Emerson men seem strange and unfamiliar to Lucy and Charlotte. The men seem unaware of finer upper class Victorian manners, and offer Lucy and Charlotte a room with a view where the gentlemen have already slept, and Charlotte fusses until she must give in or appear overbearingly rude. As Lucy begins her journey to maturity, she finds herself drawn to George due to his mysterious thinking and readily expressed emotions.

A number of people residing at the pensione take a carriage ride in the country. A mischievous Italian driver gets back at Charlotte by misdirecting an unchaperoned Lucy to George in a barley field as he admires the view. George suddenly embraces and passionately kisses Lucy as she approaches him. Charlotte has followed Lucy, witnesses the act, and quickly stops the intimacy. George's unreserved passion shocks Lucy, but also lights a secret desire and romance in her heart. Charlotte suggests George kissing her was the act of a rake. Charlotte makes reference to a heartbreak from her youth that occurred the same way and has behaved accordingly with disgust and anger toward George. Charlotte uses guilt to coerce Lucy to secrecy to save both their reputations as a young lady and a chaperone, but it is mostly for her own benefit. Normally, if a young man kissed a young lady, an engagement should be announced to preserve her reputation, but Charlotte considers George to be an undesirable influence. Upon returning to England, Lucy tells her mother nothing due to Charlotte's influence, and pretends to forget the incident. She accepts a marriage proposal from an uptight, but respectable and wealthy man named Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis). However, she soon learns that both George and his father have moved to her small village and will be her neighbors due to a letter from Reverend Beebe inviting them to reside in an empty cottage.

The appearance of George soon disrupts Lucy's plans and causes her suppressed feelings to resurface, complicated by the supposed need for secrecy. Lucy consistently refuses George's attempts to woo her because of Charlotte's admonitions. A confused Lucy breaks her engagement to Cecil due to George's influence, and plans to travel with the two Miss Alans, this time to escape the nearness of George. George has also decided that he must move for peace of mind and makes arrangements. Lucy stops by Reverend Beebe's and is confronted by George's father before they are to leave town. Lucy runs down the road and catches up with her mother's carriage and reveals the truth about her feelings. At the end, we see George and Lucy honeymooning in the Italian pensione where they met, in the room with the view.