Though a few days overdue by the calendar, Enchanted April (1992) has finally made it to DVD. And, boy, did I need it. The movie tells us that what women want is a getaway to the Italian Riviera. But you don’t need to be a member of the fairer sex to crave that. Plopped down in front of the tube on another dreary day in Brooklyn, I could relate to its protagonist, rain-soaked Lottie Wilkins (Josie Lawrence), who decides she’s had enough of London fog and needs some of that Mediterranean wisteria and sunshine she’s read about in a newspaper ad. You go, girl.
A hotly requested title, Enchanted April has arrived just in time to make for a nice Mother’s Day gift, though it looks a little less than itself. You’d expect a movie with “Miramax Films Award-Winning Collection” embossed in gold on the box to shine as prettily as the moon in the film, particularly one that exemplifies the history of its distributor. Before its purchase by Disney and the game-changing year of 1994 and Pulp Fiction, Miramax thrived on acquisitions like Enchanted April, a BBC telefilm that aired in 1991. According to director Mike Newell’s commentary track, the English critics, bored with another 1920s-set “heritage” film, yawned. But Harvey and Bob Weinstein knew that former colonists have a bottomless appetite for old-fashioned Anglophilia. With good reviews backing it up on these shores—critics aren’t immune, either—the company really ran with the picture, as it did in those lean-and-hungry days. Miramax’s efforts propelled a modest TV movie to a sizable $13 million gross at the U.S. boxoffice and three Oscar nominations, for co-star Joan Plowright, screenwriter Peter Barnes, and costume designer Sheena Napier.
It may have been those origins that tripped it up on DVD. Not necessarily intended for theatrical release, the movie, shot on location in Portofino, Genoa, and Liguria, may never have had the ravishing, Merchant-Ivory beauty that A Room with a View (1985), a fellow traveler from England to Italy, possessed. But the drab interiors and not-quite-blooming outdoor textures here, sprinkled with occasionally heavy spritzes of grain, suggest a faded photograph. More compromisingly, the picture appears overmatted at the 1.85:1 aspect ratio, where 1.75 or 1.66 might have sufficed. Those Oscar-nominated heads and hats are continually being cut off. (more…)
