Forster on film

Odyssey Video (£15.99)

EM Forster never wanted his books filmed, and with this first novel he may have had a point.

It's a typically astute but highly unsubtle study in Edwardian family values, reverently filmed by Charles (Brideshead Revisited) Sturridge. Helen Mirren is the outsider who married into the Herriton clan, packed off to Italy with Helena Bonham-Carter to recover when she is widowed.

There, she finds love with a lowly dentist, and Rupert Graves is accordingly dispatched to stop the disgrace to his family.

It looks beautiful, and Mirren and Judy Davis (as Graves's uptight sister) are excellent, but there's no denying it's all just a little out of date.