Quartet - The Merchant Ivory Collection
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alan Bates, Anthony Higgins, Isabelle Adjani, Maggie Smith, Pierre ClémentiBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: French (Unknown); English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-02-24
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Quartet - The Merchant Ivory Collection
Movie Review: The Road to Ruin
Summary: 5 Stars
I was really surprised by the negative reviews for this film. But Quartet is not the standard Merchant Ivory film at all. The topic may be dark, but there is still great beauty, great acting and great filmmaking in this story of repression, decadence, alienation and the search for something better (even thought the lead character never finds it).
Very incredible performances from Adjani, Smith and Bates. But that's to be expected. And there should be great applause for many of the supporting actors as well: Anthony Higgins(as Adjani's seductive yet caring husband), Sheila Gish(as a chatty,gossipy closet lesbian) and Daniel Chatto (in a supporting role as a melodramatic adolescent pretty boy).
See this movie for the rare dramatic performance from Maggie Smith, who can still make on laugh with just a glance or roll of the eyes. Adjani is astonishing, as is to be expected, playing the lead role of the confused and naieve Mayra. It is probably her best performance since her debut in the Story of Adele H.
It is actually quite easy to see why Merchant Ivory decided to make the Jean Rhys novel into a film. There are clear parallels between characters that Rhys writes about and those In EM Forster's novels. Quartet's main character, Mayra, is an outsider, desperately trying to get to the inside of something that is considered "normal". Forster lived his life in the same way. Both writers, in their journey for a better life, simply wrote about both the joy and pain along the way in their books.
I saw this movie a long time ago on video and the quality was not good. I have to give this movie another 5 stars just because of the excellent transfer. It is 100% better in the audio and the screen presentation. Here you can see the great detail found in the scenery, the costumes and the performance from the actors.
This is a definite must see.
Summary of Quartet - The Merchant Ivory Collection
A story of a girl who, adrift with her feckless husband amid the literati of glittering Paris in the 1920s, becomes entrapped by a rich and sybaritic English couple. From the wistful melancholy of the autobiographical novel by Jean Rhys, Quartet is full of intense confrontations dazzlingly acted by Alan Bates, Maggie Smith, Anthony Higgins, and Isabelle Adjani. The characters act out their passions not only in the usual seedy cafés and louche hotels of Rhys? Parisian novels but also the smoky jazz haunts and lavish settings of a James Ivory film. Nevertheless, Quartet remains, in theme, one of the Merchant Ivory team?s darkest and most compelling dramas of relationships dangerously intertwined.Similar DVD Movies
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