Enchanted April

ENCHANTED APRIL sets out to celebrate the liberating effects of an Italian vacation on four troubled English women--a gentle, low-budget blend of A ROOM WITH A VIEW and THELMA & LOUISE. But this paper-thin drama, directed by Mike Newell (DANCE WITH A STRANGER) and adapted from the 1921 novel by Elizabeth von Armin, fails to achieve the sense of magical transformation for which it strives.

Lottie Wilkins (Josie Lawrence) is a downtrodden middle-class wife with a vaguely mystical ability to "see into people." Captivated by a newspaper ad offering a month in an Italian villa, she senses that her neighbor Rose Arbuthnot (Miranda Richardson) is equally in need...