The British love their melodramas. The makers of this one seem to have lost sight of when having too much of it becomes boring and burdensome. Based on a 1953 novel called The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann, the style of sentimentality brought to intense levels of angst amid constricting mores seems aimed at audiences of that era. As a new release, Lucinda Coxon's screenplay is likely to foster ennui well before it reaches its climax (no pun intended).The plot is thin, if not threadbare, presenting the too-oft-seen love triangle. Perhaps the notion of a pair of sisters in love (in their particular ways) with one's husband seemed like an original idea, but it comes off as derivative and tedious. Paul Bettany, who played Chaucer in A Knight's Tale and John Nash's imaginary roommate in A Beautiful Mind, takes on the colorless banker-husband-lover Rickie, the object of the sisters' desires. Stuffy though he may be, we understand why he's prone to stray from his wife, Madeleine (Olivia Williams), a caustic and chilly socialite who criticizes her younger sister with haughty superiority. She seems to think that there's something wrong with Dinah (Helena Bonham Carter) for remaining unmarried and free-spirited when, as we see it, Dinah is the more attractive and sensual of the two.
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