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Enchanted April
This is a wonderful English film.
The English often have a great facility for presenting accounts of the
utterly unexpected, with total credibility. "Enchanted April" is
a case in point.
Two women from dysfunctional
marriages decide to go for a vacation together at an Italian villa. There
they meet two more women: one gorgeous model, fleeing from her celebrity,
and one cantankerous older woman who recalls her younger days
among people of culture.
Eventually, the husbands of the
first two women arrive, and we are prepared for the usual movie stuff:
angry fighting between spouses and sexual games. Indeed, the film sets up
the audience with all the premises of the sex farce: both men are attracted
to the glamorous model, and there is much discussion about who will sleep
where. We expect that there will be much farcical bumping around in the
night, as the men go after the pretty woman.
What happens, however, is entirely
different, and shockingly wonderful. Both marriages are repaired, and the
single women are reborn, so to speak. Through his wife's assistance,
one of the men makes a valuable business contact, in such a way
that he comes to appreciate anew what his wife means to him. In
the end, everyone is happy; all have learned to look at
life differently. Nor does it happen in ways obviously
"concocted" by maudlin filmmakers. Rather, the development is
entirely credible in both script and performance.
It is not a Christian movie, particularly. But it honors a lot of things important to Christians: marriage, the beauties of creation, reconciliation, love, inter-generational compassion. It twists, perhaps even satirizes, the conventions of the Hollywood sex farce. One expects in movies to see the libertines laughing at the "straights." Here it is the straights that get the last laugh.