A Room With a View (1985)

A ROOM WITH A VIEW  (1985)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: James Ivory
    Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott,
    Julian Sands, Simon Callow, Daniel Day-Lewis,
    Judi Dench, Rupert Graves, Patrick Godfrey
An elegant period comedy from Merchant-Ivory, starring 19-year-old Helena Bonham Carter as a girl who falls for one guy, gets engaged to another, and ends up lying to everybody. Julian Sands plays the sympathetic suitor who adores her. Daniel Day-Lewis plays the arrogant twit she promises to marry. Maggie Smith and Denholm Elliott play older relatives who give Helena and Julian a lot of not-always-welcome advice. The locations are Florence and the English countryside. There's a skinny-dipping scene, but in a switch from what you might expect, it's the men, not the women, going naked in the pond. A breakout role for Bonham Carter, whose precocious screen presence and not-quite-grownup poise are reminiscent of Judy Davis in "My Brilliant Career". Based on a novel by E.M. Forster