(2005) Director Tristram Powell's film, from a screenplay by the estimable Andrew Davies based on Elizabeth Jane Howard's novel, would serve as a worthy 90-minute episode on PBS's Mystery series, if not for the several nude scenes of sexual congress.

In Yorkshire, middle-aged Henry Kent (Michael Kitchen), leading a cramped existence inside a boat with a taste for alcohol and pornographic literature, weary of being alone since separation from his wife Hazel two years earlier, apostrophizes whether romantic love at his age is still possible. "Was this love?" Daisy Redfern (Penelope Wilton) introspects with herself: "And how can we know?"

Upon the arrival from London of a new resident in a cottage, Henry promptly appears on the scene, offering his services to Daisy, a well-to-do British author (nom de plume and maiden name of Langrish) seeking privacy and solitude for her writing; emotionally vulnerable, she's also in the process of getting a divorce from her second husband Jason for his infidelity, which broke her heart. "Most men don't know how to treat a woman," Henry confides to us: "I do."

Judging him initially to be "nice but intrusive, probably lonely," Daisy hires Henry as her gardener before having to return to London. Recognizing in her much "hurt and disappointment," Henry silently promises: "I'm going to make it all up to you."

Before asking for permission and a key in a letter to Daisy, in which he claims to have read her novels (though he's only researched her biography), Henry takes up residency in her cottage, snooping and prying into her personal effects; he also provides a lengthy preface to his own adulthood, telling her of his growing up as the son of a gardener for Lady Carteret, who loaned the boy books from her personal library, beginning with The Adventures of Tom Jones.

Lying in bed in hospital following being struck by a motorbike, Daisy reads Henry's epistle, including his lustful adventures with Lily (from whom, he tells us in an aside, he learned how to give a woman pleasure as well as how to withhold it) and secret love for young Daphne Carteret.

Daisy's agent Anna Blackstone drives out to "interrogate" Henry, as he sees it; she expresses her disapproval of Henry to Daisy, calling the gardener "a different sort of crook," remarking: "Gardeners don't make beds." Another friend Anthony thinks Henry's after her heart. Nevertheless, Daisy appreciates all that Henry has done for the cottage, outside and in, while taking a fancy to him.

As she resumes occupancy of her cottage, Daisy also addresses the audience: "He sort of started to take over my life." Still unsteady on her feet from the foot injury, she falls, suffering a concussion and painful bruises; finding her on the ground, Henry takes her back inside. Not wanting to return to hospital, Daisy accepts - with proviso, "I wouldn't want you to have any expectations" - his generous offer to nurse her back to health (as he says he did for his invalid wife) along with his suggestion that he sleep in the extra bedroom in order to be available at a moment's notice.

Spending much time together under these intimate circumstances, Daisy, becoming fond of her sensitive, well-read handyman, asks Henry (no less a Fielding in his storytelling), who says he preferred to be called Hal as a young lad, to tell her more about his relationship with Daphne. Presenting his youthful self as a victim of class prejudice and love denied, Hal was sent away from the big house after Lady Carteret confided: "Daphne is your half sister."

Certain that she neither wants nor needs a man's love, especially not another marriage, Daisy places us in her confidence: "But I do want this odd thing to go on - just as it is."

In the next episode of his pastoral tale, Henry tells Daisy about his elopement with Charley; but the flashback scenes of the brief marriage provide strong hints of his terrible temper and cruelty. "Crazy for the love of you," his need to control and get what he wants begins pressing through the veneer of his gentleness and courtesy - though their love making has brought Daisy much genuine joy - as he applies greater pressure on Daisy to marry him.

Finding a letter addressed to Henry from Hazel, the authoress pays a visit to Henry's spouse of twelve years.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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