Fans of Merchant-Ivory will rightly expect lush period settings and some of the great talents in British cinema—like Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Hopkins & Helena Bonham Carter. But this emotional epic of forsaken love also remarkably teems with rage at the class divisions in Edwardian-era England.
Thirty years before Call Me By Your Name, this lavish period drama from Merchant Ivory encapsulated their uniquely tender and direct perspective on gay love. Featuring a young Hugh Grant in a passionate, heartbreaking performance, this visionary piece of queer cinema has left its mark.
Starring Isabelle Adjani in a four-way love affair, Merchant-Ivory’s impeccable adaptation invokes the sordid glamor of Jean Rhys’s eponymous novel. Waltzing through cozy cafés and sexy nightclubs, Quartet dines on the bohemian hedonism of 1920s Paris while exposing the callousness of the idle rich.
Another winning collaboration with writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, this Merchant-Ivory gem marvels at the beauty of India while remaining critical of the Western gaze. Time-traveling between two intercultural romances starring Shashi Kapoor and Julie Christie, Heat and Dust simmers with feminine rage.
Adapting Henry James’s tragicomic novel with precision and style, this lavish, Oscar®-nominated Merchant Ivory production revolves around a fiery battle of wills. Tinged with sapphic desire, the central love triangle delicately hints at the complexities of women’s suffrage in 19th-century America.
