Surviving Piccasso

An adaptation of E. M. Forster’s 1910 novel of the same title about the class divided in Edwardian England. Sisters Margaret and Helen Schlegel are intelligent, cultured, and highly emancipated by the standards of the time. When they make the acquaintance of the prosperous, conventional Wilcox family, Helen falls in love with Paul, the younger Wilcox son. Things go as badly as expected with two such different individuals…

Lucy Honeychurch, a spirited young Englishwoman, embarks on a journey of self-discovery during a trip to Italy. When she and her chaperone find themselves in Florence with viewless rooms, fellow guests Mr. Emerson and his son George step in to remedy the situation. Lucy falls in love with the free-spirited and unconventional George, but is later forced to choose between her heart’s desire and the expectations of her rigid social class.

In the entr’acte between World Wars, Stevens is the perfect English butler at the estate of Lord Darlington. Stevens’s obsessively dutiful, thoroughly unsentimental way of life is disrupted by the arrival of new housekeeper Miss Kenton, who is as spirited as she is capable. Stevens’s myopic worldview—and unequivocal loyalty to his master—comes to blows with Miss Kenton’s sense of moral outrage when Lord Darlington is made an unwitting Nazi pawn.