An impoverished woman who has been forced to choose between a privileged life with her wealthy aunt and her journalist lover, befriends an American heiress. When she discovers the heiress is attracted to her own lover and is dying, she sees a chance to have both the privileged life she cannot give up and the lover she cannot live without. Based on the novel by Henry James.
“The Wings of the Dove” is the cold-blooded story of two British lovers who plot to deprive a rich American girl (“the richest orphan in the world”) of her heart and her inheritance. What makes it complicated–what makes it James–is that the two lovers really do like the rich girl, and she really does like them, and everyone eventually knows more or less precisely what is being done. The buried message is that when it comes to money, sex, love and death, most people are prepared to go a great deal further than they would admit. The reason we’re so fascinated by the adaptations of James, Austen, Forster and the others is that their characters think marriage, fidelity, chastity and honesty are important. In “The Wings of the Dove,” there is a fascination in the way smart people try to figure one another out. The film is acted with great tenderness. If the three central characters had been more forthright, more hedonistic, we wouldn’t care nearly as much. But all three have a certain tact, a certain sympathy for the needs of the others. – Roger Ebert
Starring Helena Bonham Carter, Charlotte Rampling, Elizabeth McGovern, Michael Gambon, Linus Roache.
Note: The film of Henry James’ famous novel moves the action up slightly, from 1902 to 1910. James’ story, which he began writing in 1894, embedded the characters in the world of Victorian propriety. By 1910, the actions they contemplate, while still improper, were not unthinkable; modern relativism was creeping in.