Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This is everything one could possibly want a modern British period film to be: brilliant, sensitive, perfectly made, enthralling, revealing, informative, stimulating, and inspired. Did I forget anything? Oh yes, the wonderful script, cinematography, editing, costumes, sets, props, and just about anything else you care to name. The director is an inspired Irishman named Thaddeus O'Sullivan. And why has he not won an Oscar and is not making Hollywood blockbusters at a hundred million dollars a pop? Well, because he is too talented and real, that is why. The performances are magnificent and sublime. 2002 was a bumper year for Helena Bonham Carter, when she delivered possibly the two finest performances of her distinguished career. Maybe because she had found personal fulfillment with Tim Burton the year before, it was in 2002 that she made first this film and then 'Till Human Voices Wake Us', in both cases delivering performances which are staggering emotional masterpieces of the acting art. I wish she could stop wasting her time on Harry Potter and get more vehicles like this one. When she was younger, Bonham Carter was not 'sexy'. No man wanted to rip her off the screen and give her a squeeze. She was remote, quizzical, almost 'a funny little thing', despite her amazing talent. By 2002 she was as ripe as a plum, it was all there and oozing out like honey, all that emotion. She may not be a pin-up, but she is what they would call in an old noir movie 'one helluva dame'. (And let's hope she does become Dame Helena one day, for that matter, as she already deserves.) Not to be outdone, her sister is played by Olivia Williams. What a scorching, searing performance that is! She conveys so much on the outside which is concealed on the inside, that one wonders if she had been psychologically involuted specially for this film. What a study this is of sibling rivalries between two sisters! The two actresses seem to have a telepathic communion between them, as when one of them flickers an eyelid, the other winces. If one inhales, the other holds her breath. They were really living this, it was beyond acting. The man caught in the middle between these two lovelies is Paul Bettany, who is perfectly cast, whose performance is perfectly judged, and is delivered with such pervading melancholy and resignation to the Fates that it elevates this tragic love story to Olympian heights. Bettany's versatility was later to be proved when he played Silas in 'The Da Vinci Code', an almost incomprehensible transformation of an actor who here is the very model of a 1930s gent. The costumes are so totally amazing in this film that you want to faint with delight, just looking at them. Where did they get those materials from? How did they do it? This film is a genuine classic, and a model of its kind. It was not until the end credits that I realized I had just seen the screen adaptation of Rosamund Lehmann's novel 'The Echoing Grove', one of her few books I had never got round to reading, though she once told me she believed it to be her best. The film was so emotional and intense that when I saw this it triggered tears, because one of the most traumatic episodes of my entire life was being with Rosamund the day she died in 1990. I arrived to see her, and the woman looking after her left us alone in the house. At first our conversation was normal and lucid, but Rosamund began to go peculiar and fade in and out of consciousness. She started to hold conversations with imaginary people who were appearing to her, especially a young man whom she loved (she was then 89). Rosamund's two great character flaws in her otherwise wonderful personality were female vanity and uncontrollable romantic and sexual passion (as shown in the character played by Helena Bonham Carter). Rosamund was intensely passionate right up to the end, and can literally be said to have been in love on her deathbed, and was straightening her hair and reaching for her lipstick. I felt so desperately uncomfortable being the witness to all these deepest possible intimacies that I have tried for all these years to eradicate it all from my memory, looking at the details as too personal to Rosamund and none of my business. I tried my best to make her comfortable and help her, but after several hours it became clear to me that she was really dying and I had to call for help. She deserved and needed a close friend (as I was only an acquaintance) and of course the doctor. Rosamund was in no pain, but seemed to be being 'called' at last to rejoin her adored daughter Sally, who had died at 24, and whose death caused Rosamund to join the College of Psychic Studies and become a dedicated spiritualist in order to keep in touch with her, which she was convinced she had. And here I was, witness to Rosamund's contact with the spirits right in front of my eyes. I believe it was only four hours after I left the house that Rosamund was dead. The whole subject is so upsetting that I try never to think about it. I really do believe that people should not have curious spectators present at their deaths, however sympathetic they may be, such as myself. They need their friends and loved ones with them. And this did happen in her last moments. I am glad that this film, a perfect testament to Rosamund's amazingly brilliant talent and insights into human emotions, has been rendered on the screen. I do urge all who have a jot of emotion within them to see it, if only to pursue the hidden dynamics of feelings into the innermost recesses of the female heart.

I am not sure what the purpose of this film, The Heart Of Me, a remade The Wings Of The Dove also starring Helena Bonham Carter is but it is pale in comparison however more true to life it could be. Where Wings is heart wrenching Heart is shocking and maybe just a romantic vehicle for Paul Bettany to inspire all possible fans. The Heart Of Me and The Wings Of The Dove are kind of like the double play of Dangerous Liaisons, which I prefer, to Valmont. However if you like romantic tragedy or character weakness with listen dialog The Heart of Me is quite possible for you. Helena Bonham Carter normally a fairly good actress in these period pieces seems absolutely lost and not sure what her character is to accomplish and she comes across that way, unsympathetic where in Wings on course she has the part in her hands. Olivia Williams new to me acquits herself well but still Paul Bettany seems to be the target or missing portion of The Heart Of Me not sure his character is growing or coming out of hiding. Therefore my conclusion is Bettany vehicle not near as good as Linus Roache vehicle, The Wings Of The Dove. Still worth a look for shock value and character assessment.

I wonder of some of the other reviewers and I saw the same film. While this film had great visual beauty it was slow as molasses. That isn't always bad if one feels involved in what is going on on screen but that was not the case here. It seems that many reviewers blame Paul Bettany's character's weak will and Bonham Carter's character's lack of moral compass for their affair. I don't think this is the case. For one thing I have never known love to be something one can feel or not feel at will. For another, Olivia Williams' Madeleine seems to have lost her passion for her husband at least by the time the affair is revealed to the audience. Did anyone not notice her (literally) turning a cold shoulder when her husband comes to kiss her at her dressing table? Did anyone notice the challenge in Bettany's voice when, after the affair is discovered, he kisses Williams and tells her that this is what she has coming back to her revealing the lovelessness (at least physically speaking) that would likely have doomed their marriage regardless of outside influence?Carter does not, for me, possess the kind of fatal beauty that would make her character irresistible to a happily married man and I don't think the film intends for us to feel that way about her. Williams is much more classically beautiful and if the sister character (Carter) had been supposed to be a femme fatale then the roles of sister and wife would have been better switched. It was love that brought the husband and sister together not just a submission to passion by two morally weak characters. Yes, something can be said about the sister allowing herself to be in such a position. She might have decided that, love notwithstanding, the great wrong was not necessarily being with a married man but being unfaithful to her own sister. Still, it seems clear that the marriage was an empty one anyway with only the couples' love for their doomed son giving them much reason to continue the charade. Remember too, that their daughter was the product of angry assault and not the result of a resumption of regular marital relations.With all that juicy plot substance going for it I still think the film was a dismal failure. Very little exploration of Bettany and Carter's life together and despite the fact that the war plays a big part in Bettany's character's demise there was very little sense of the times for the part of the film that takes place before and during the war. I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone except hard core fans of the leads (and Eleanor Bron who was so great in "Help)and as a chance to see more of Olivia Williams who deserves better than the clunkers ("Born Romantic","The Postman","To Kill A King") she's appeared in. Of course, she has also done episodes of "Van der Valk" which I would love to see but which, it seems, will never come out on video or DVD.

This film reminded me of those drawing room dramas that used to play in English theatres in the 1940s and 1950s - like a Noel Coward, with more sex but not a trace of wit. The characters are not engaging, and are played without much in the way of flair. Williams is starchy, Bonham-Carter is flighty but weary (the usual thing - I think this probably just how she is in the flesh), Bettany is agonisingly caught between the two. His is the best performance of the three, but his skilful portrayal of suffering is not enough to carry the piece. This was an odd adaptation for the BBC et al to plump for. Surely there are still better period novels out there still awaiting adaptation for the screen.