My House In Umbria

Reviewed by PETER CALDER

Herald rating: * * *

The flaky, slightly plastered eccentric Englishwoman abroad is a role that fits Maggie Smith so well that if the stereotype had not existed the great English actress would have made it necessary to invent it.

And she plays it with lip-smacking relish here in a made-for-television film which will entrance those who wish there were more quality dramas on the small screen.

Adapted by 40-year veteran Hugh Whitemore from the 1991 novella by Felicia's Journey author William Trevor, and directed by the man who helmed Ian McKellen's Richard III, it's a film that never really shakes its novelistic origins.

The slight story doubtless works well on the page, where the main character's dreams and ruminations can breathe; but on screen it feels wordy and unremarkable, though perfectly inoffensive.

That said, a great cast and the postcard-perfect countryside makes it more than watchable.

Smith is Emily Delahunty, a successful romantic novelist, who shares the villa of the title with her loyal manservant Quinty (Spall). Here she offers refuge to the survivors - of which she is one - of a terrorist attack on a train. Each has been bereaved by the bombing: a retired general (a remarkable Barker), a handsome young German (Furmann) and Aimee (Clarke), an American girl, now orphaned and struck mute by the trauma.

In the sunlit courtyards and on the shady terraces of Emily's sprawling property the members of this odd group heal, meanwhile forging a special bond which is interrupted by the arrival from America of Aimee's uncle (Cooper), a stern and uptight entomologist who is planning to take her home.

Smith does so much in the way of voiceover duties that it sometimes feels like listening to a talking book - she speaks, for example, of finding another's voice "like chalk on a blackboard" - and the film would have benefited from a more vigorous adaptation that required its characters to show, rather than tell, us what is going on.

But it's nonetheless a charming and diverting entertainment for audiences who long for movies without sex, violence and bad language.

Cast: Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall, Ronnie Barker, Chris Cooper, Giancarlo Giannini, Benno Furmann, Emmy Clarke

Director: Richard Loncraine

Rating: M

Running time: 99 mins

Screening: Rialto and Bridgeway.