Nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1986 and winner of three, A Room With a View is the film that defined Merchant-Ivory as the masters of the romantic period piece and this brilliant adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel ranks as their very finest work.
When a young Englishwoman named Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter, Sweeney Todd) and her spinster chaperone Charlotte (Maggie Smith, Gosford Park) travel to Italy, they become acquainted with a free-spirited and unconventional Englishman named Mr. Emerson (Denholm Elliot), and his enigmatic and romantically unhappy son, George (Julian Sands, The Killing Fields). After George kisses Lucy during a picnic in the Florentine hills, Charlotte rushes her back to England. Safely home, Lucy becomes engaged to her stiff and very proper fianc Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood). After finding out the Emersons have moved close by Lucy has a hard time ignoring her attraction to the unsuitable George and must wrestle with her inner romantic longings and choose between passion and convention.