Film

Enchanted April

Name: Enchanted April
Genre: Romance, Drama
Released: 1991
Cast: Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson, Polly Walker, Joan Plowright, Alfred Molina

Drama
Light-hearted
Slow-burning

A gentle, sun-drenched comedy of quiet liberation: two unhappy Englishwomen escape grey London for a borrowed Italian castle, and slowly, almost accidentally, remember who they are. It's cosy without being toothless — Josie Lawrence and Miranda Richardson are wonderful, the wisteria does half the acting, and the whole thing moves at the pace of a long, restorative holiday. Ideal for a rainy Sunday.

TMDb rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like gentle character comedies where the pleasure lies in watching repressed people slowly loosen up, with sunlit scenery, sharp dialogue and a warm, unhurried affection for its heroines.

Skip it if you want plot momentum or a clear forward drive, since much of the running time is spent lingering over moods, small reactions and the slow shift of its four women.

What it asks of you: Settle in for about ninety-five minutes of unhurried watching; it moves at the pace of a holiday, so patience with quiet scenes and gradual change pays off.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

A Room with a View1986

Same Merchant Ivory house style, same idea that Italy unlocks something English reserve keeps padlocked shut. Helena Bonham Carter is radiant, and the ending is one of the great swoony payoffs in period cinema.

But If you find E.M. Forster's Englishness insufferable rather than charming, this will test your patience.

Tea with Mussolini1999

Another ensemble of Englishwomen finding themselves changed by Italy, this time with real historical stakes as fascism closes in around their sunlit expat life. Joan Plowright again, deliciously grand.

But The tonal lurch from comedy to wartime peril is bumpier than Enchanted April's gentler arc.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel2012

A group of English strangers abroad, each nursing a private disappointment, each slowly loosened up by a new place and new company. Judi Dench and Maggie Smith on typically excellent form.

But It's broader and more sitcom-ish than Enchanted April, with jokes where the earlier film has silences.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Enchanted April

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Now, Voyager1942

Same premise, four decades earlier and dialled up to eleven: an unhappy woman leaves home, and a change of place cracks her open. It's the classic Hollywood ancestor of your quiet English castle story.

Bette Davis plays a repressed, dowdy woman who takes a sea voyage and returns unrecognisable — decades before Lottie and Rose, Hollywood already knew that travel could be a form of self-rescue. Gorgeous, swooning, unapologetically melodramatic.

But Black-and-white studio-era pacing and heightened emotion will feel stagey next to Enchanted April's gentleness.

A Month by the Lake1995

English visitors, Italian light, and a wonderfully unhurried romance between Vanessa Redgrave and Edward Fox that captures the exact same feeling of a holiday recalibrating a whole life.

But Slighter and less well-known — charming but modest, without Enchanted April's ensemble richness.

Howards End1992

Another Merchant Ivory study of women's inner lives against gorgeous production design, with Emma Thompson's Margaret quietly out-manoeuvring a world built to constrain her.

But Denser and more plot-driven, with property and inheritance doing a lot of the emotional heavy lifting.

Calendar Girls2003

Swap Italy for Yorkshire, but the engine's identical: ordinary Englishwomen shrugging off politeness and discovering they've got more nerve than anyone expected. Warm, funny, unexpectedly moving.

But Broader comedy, cruder jokes — this is Enchanted April with the volume turned up and the poetry turned down.

Under the Tuscan Sun2003

The American cousin to Lottie and Rose's story — a woman buys a crumbling Tuscan villa post-divorce and rebuilds herself alongside it. Diane Lane makes the whole thing glow.

But More overtly a rom-com, and the Italy-as-therapy metaphor is laid on considerably thicker.

Sense and Sensibility1995

Austen's version of women constrained by marriage and money finding their own quiet forms of rebellion, with Emma Thompson's script as sharp as her performance.

But No Italy, no sunshine — this trades warmth for wit and a more melancholy English drizzle.

Mamma Mia!2008

If you want the Mediterranean-escape feeling without any of the restraint: bright, ridiculous, full of women reconnecting with joy they'd half forgotten they had.

But It's a jukebox musical. If ABBA numbers breaking out mid-conversation isn't your idea of relaxing, steer clear.

The Durrells2016

Same engine — Britishness dissolving in Greek or Italian sunlight — but stretched into long-form comedy-drama, letting you live inside that transformation for hours instead of minutes.

A skint English family relocates to 1930s Corfu and, over four warm, funny, sun-baked seasons, slowly comes back to life — the exact transformation-through-Mediterranean-escape feeling, just given room to breathe.

But It's a full TV series, not a tidy two hours — a much bigger time commitment for a similar feeling.

Y Tu Mamá También2001

Strip away the castle and the manners: it's still strangers thrown together in a beautiful place, each one changed by what the journey and the landscape force them to confront about themselves.

Two teenage boys and an older woman drive across Mexico, and the journey itself becomes a reckoning with mortality, desire, and everything they've been avoiding. Sun-drenched, sensuous, and devastating by the end.

But Explicit sexuality and a raw, unsentimental register are about as far from Enchanted April's cosiness as it gets.