a room with a view serves as a reminder of how good of an actor helena bonham carter when she isn't going too over the top with her performance or when she plays up the weirdness too much. with many of her later performances being "tim burtonized", so to speak, her debut film is quite the opposite but is much more effective because of it. in this film, she is radiant, yet reserved, conveying complex emotion with the deft subtlety that veteran actors are more known for. she, and her excellent performance, anchor this merchant ivory production. a room with a view tells the story of a young british lady, lucy, who is on vacation in italy when she falls in love with a young man, whose morals, sexually and romantically, are more progressive than the era they live in. however, lucy's upbringing within the conservative mores of the time suggest she marries someone else. the film, essentially, is an exploration of this tension and how she navigates her feelings and how it differs from what she was taught. the film is trying to get at the dynamic between how one feels and the social and moral climate of the time one lives in, which often takes the form of how one thinks one should act. this is an interesting dynamic to consider, as it is something that everyone experiences in their life. it is a dynamic that is very close to the experience of what it means to be human. however, the film never really dives into the implications or into exploring this dynamic in a satisfying way. the plot and the narrative comes of as cliche even though i do think that it is going for something deeper than that. it is using the conventions of the drama to get at something new but never is able to make that connection explicitly enough for it to be effective enough to become a great movie. instead, the temporal disconnect and the repetition of some of the tropes of the genre alienate the viewer from the experience that it is trying to explore. it doesn't seem relatable enough to have the impact that the film is hoping to have. that, i think, is the main problem with the movie and why the film didn't have the emotional impact for me that the film was hoping to elicit. by the end, i respected many aspects of this film and enjoyed some of the other ones but it never came together as something that is the sum of those decent parts. the same thing happened with my response to the other merchant ivory production that i have seen, howard's end as mentioned, the performances here are quite good and are one of the most enjoyable aspects of the film. other than bonham carter, daniel day-lewis gives a pretty quirky performance as lucy's nebbish suitor that matches the rest of the film surprisingly well. of course, maggie smith and judi dench are delightfully proper and prim as older women in this period piece. all of the performances here are actually quite good and delightful to behold. this is a well-crafted film and one that is enjoyable because of all of the different parts that are so well done in the film. if only it was able to come together in a more satisfying way than it did, this would be a very good film.