Heat and Dust

James Ivory, 1983 (9.0*)
Beautiful story by Ruth Prabwar Jvabvala, based on her novel, another Merchant/Ivory film (Room With a View, Passage to India). Julie Christie is a woman who inherit’s her deceased aunt’s diary, based on her life in India, and she decides to go to India and retrace her aunt’s footsteps.

The story of the aunt is told in flashbacks: a young British wife, Greta Scacchi, bored with her military husband always being away on duty, is befriended by a local Indian prince, The Nawob, played by Scacchi’s real-life husband Shashi Kapoor, which is highly improper of course. Nicholas Grace (also in Brideshead Revisited) turns in a strong performance here as well. The two stories are deftly blended together, and we get romances decades apart and in two different Indias, separated by time, one colonial, one independent; this brilliantly tells a classical style romance through a modern perspective.

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A Room With a View

Dir: James Ivory, 1985 (9.9*)

Best Picture (BAA)

Excellent filming of the E.M. Forster romantic comedy novel. This deservedly made Helena Bonham Carter a star, the only mystery was the lack of an Oscar nomination (she later got one for Wings of the Dove). Lush, lyrical, funny, yet not stuffy at all for a classic novel, thanks to the Ivory direction and terrific cast: young Daniel-Day Lewis, hilarious as stuffshirt fiance Cecil back in England, and especially Maggie Smith as the doting aunt chaperone, and Denholm Elliott as the free spirited father of the romantic son, Julian Sands. Both were nominated along with Ivory as director; and it won 3 Oscars (art direction, costume design, screenplay for Ruth Jhabvala, author of the novel and film Heat and Dust). One of the best romances on film. 3 Oscars for 8 nominations

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