Enchanted April DVD Review

Published on April 25, 2009 by Christina Zawadiwsky   ·   No Comments

Throughout history many have chosen location as a means of transformation – go somewhere else and your life will be changed! So do Lotty (Josie Lawrence) and Rose (Miranda Richardson) in Miramax Film’s May 5, 2009 DVD release of Enchanted April, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical).

Lotty and Rose, both members of The Nightingale Women’s Club (which helps the poor), notice an advertisement in a newspaper that offers “sun and wisteria” in an Italian castle with servants for the month of April. Surrounded by old and young soldiers in the streets, many of them wounded from World War I, in dark and grim London, and married to husbands who don’t understand them (Lotty to bourgeoisie Mellersh – Alfred Molina – a solicitor who aspires to wealth more than to loving interactions, and God-fearing Rose to Frederick – Jim Broadbent – the author of naughty biographies about women, e.g. The Sins of Madame de Pompadour), Lotty particularly longs for new horizons and persuades Rose to go with her on this unusual trip. To lessen expenses they solicit two other women, Mrs. Fisher (Joan Plowright), who, although very high society and who comes with the best of recommendations, is older and isolated and living in the past in her mind, and Carolyn (Polly Walker), a young beauty who is tired of being grabbed at by men and just wants to be away from anyone she knows!

Watch Enchanted April “Picnic” Movie Clips
Very much a period piece, with proper etiquette, stiff men’s collars, velvet dresses, embroidered hats and long cigarette holders, Enchanted April is also quite a witty comedy of errors. Shown sepia photographs of San Salvatore, the Italian castle, by its owner, musician Mr. Briggs (Michael Kitchen), Lotty and Rose pay cash and soon after can barely believe that they’re being transported far away from their homes, where on the first night they arrive rain-drenched, five hours late, exhausted and unable to communicate with the locals. The next day, however, they wake to flowers, vast amounts of sunshine, church bells ringing and a country landscape that’s a veritable “mirage.”

What’s left to them then is (besides lying in the sun and on large rocks near the sea and resting in a place where time moves very slowly) learning how to get along with the rather dour and straight-laced Mrs. Fisher and the reclusive and generally silent Caroline. But soon they have visitors – Lotty’s husband Mellersh (who approves of her famous and wealthy friends and wants to somehow capitalize on them to help his business), Mr. Briggs himself (who, we find, is enamoured with Rose), and, unexpectedly, Rose’s husband Frederick, who stops in to see Carolyn while on a European book tour (little knowing that -oops! – she is his wife’s vacation companion). Enormous spiderwebs sparkling in the sun are often lingered upon as symbols of slowly-spun time with food for thought trapped in their strands!

Mr. Briggs tells a story about his father leaving his cane in the earth at San Salvatore and it sprouts leaves and becomes a tree, and at the end of Enchanted April Mrs. Fisher too plants her cane there, leaving her old age behind her as Lotty vows to become the friend who will end her loneliness. A story of lost-and-found love, regeneration and the acquiring of new life values, Enchanted April is lushly and beautifully shot and will leave its viewers both visually and intellectually enchanted!

MPAA Rating: PGRunning Time: 95 minutesDVD Release Date: May 5, 2009

DVD Review by Christina Zawadiwsky of Movie Room Reviews

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Tags: Enchanted April, Enchanted April DVD