I’ve heard about the book The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim, and the movie based on it, in the past, but didn’t know what it was about. I wanted to give it a try after I read up on what the book is about earlier in the year.
I ended up really enjoying the book, so I rented the movie this week and liked it as well. The book was released in 1922 and, to me, was progressive in the idea of women needing to have their own free time.
The 1991 movie dropped the “The” and is just called Enchanted April but was exactly like the book, which was nice. They didn’t “modernize” it or add anything inappropriate. It was just subtle with wisps of suggestions of difficult or hard subjects but nothing blatantly dark or heavy, just like the book.
Both the book and the movie left me with a hopeful, uplifted, and relaxed feeling. They were both just sweet escapes that I would definitely read and watch again.
The book and movie are about four English women who rent a medieval castle in Italy for a month. The stay starts as a way for our two main characters, Mrs. Lotty Wilkins and Mrs. Rose Arbuthnot, to escape their mundane lives and dying love life with their husbands.
The two women have seen each other around their part of London but officially meet when Lotty approaches Rose at a ladies’ club after she sees Rose looking at an ad Lotty also saw for the opportunity to rent the castle. Lotty bluntly tells Rose she knows she is also miserable and needs to do something for herself and suggests they split the cost to rent the castle for a month.
Rose is taken aback and initially declines.
In the book, Lotty pesters Rose a few more times before Rose finally relents and agrees to do it. The movie condensed that timetable a bit.
Lotty is married to a solicitor who is very strict about money, and she feels like he loves money and his work more than her. She’s going to pay for the castle out of her nest egg.
Rose is married to an author who writes memoirs about the mistress of kings and writes under a pen name. Rose is very religious and feels her husband’s work is a sin and she also feels he cares more about it than her, which he does. They have money so she’s going to pay for her part on her own
In the movie, he is attending a party held for him to honor his new book and meets Lady Caroline, which will come into play later.
The two women decide they can’t actually afford the castle on their own and invite two other women to join them – Lady Caroline, who wants to get away from the grabbing paws of lecherous men and Mrs. Fisher, an elderly widow who clings to the past and likes to name-drop all the famous poets and writers she’s known over the years.
One thing I will suggest whether you read the book or watch the movie, is to not go to worst-case scenarios. If you think something “untoward” is going to happen — it isn’t.
There are moments where I worried something painful was going to happen but, thankfully, it didn’t. Despite that there was still enough plot twist in the second half of the book to keep me interested.
This was not a fast book or movie by any means.
They are both very slow but still engaging, at least in my opinion.
The only slight complaint (very slight) I have about the book is how many times Lady Caroline and everyone around her point out how pretty she is. We got it. She’s gorgeous! Sheesh!
It’s an important plot point, though, because Lady Caroline is sick of only being pretty. She’s sick of men always grabbing at her and flirting with her and being all ridiculous around her because of her beauty.
One of the reasons she’s so snappy and snarky during the book is because of a side of her she calls “Scrap”, which is what Von Arnim calls her in the book when her mean or ‘saucy’ side comes out. It was a little confusing when she would switch back and forth with the names but I caught on fairly quickly and thought it was a very creative way to show the reader that Lady Caroline knows she’s sad and twisted upside, that she has this dark side to her, and doesn’t like it.
Yes, there are times the book seemed slightly repetitive (about Lady Caroline’s beauty and her hatred of her beauty — I kept thinking of that shampoo commercial from the 1990s… “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”), but I found the characters and their development so lovable I was willing to skim those paragraphs so I could find out it all turned out.
Polly Walker played Lady Caroline and, well, she is gorgeous.
Joan Plowright was absolutely perfect as Mrs. Fisher and I think that subconsciously I was picturing her already during the sections with Mrs. Fisher as I read the book even though I didn’t even know until I watched the movie that she was in it.
Josie Lawrence plays Lottie and Miranda Richardson portrays Rose. Alfred Molina portrays Lotty’s husband and reminds me of a nicer version of his character in Chocolat. Jim Broadbent is Rose’s husband.
There is a 1935 movie called Enchanted April but after reading about it, I don’t think I’ll watch it. It is based on a play that was based on the book and switches the occupations of the two husbands for some reason.
According to TCM, Von Arnim, who was born in Australia but lived in England, wrote the book while going though a rough time in her life.
The castle in The Enchanted April is called San Salvatore and Von Arnim named it after a castle she was staying in to recover from a domineering marriage to a German count who went to jail for fraud. The movie was actually shot in this same castle, which I just thought was so cool.
After the count died, Von Arnim started an affair with H.G. Wells and later with Sir Francis Russell, who she married impulsively and which ended in disaster. It was after the marriage with Russell ended that she wrote The Enchanted April.
Have you read the book or seen the movie?
What did you think of them?
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