This dramatic romance is based on H.E. Bates novel and, like many other Merchant-Ivory productions, takes place in England and is set in the late nineteenth. The story begins when a mysterious and beautiful woman named Bella Ford (Embeth Davidtz of Army Of Darkness!) searches the countryside for the man who betrayed her. When the Wainwright's find her lonely and disheveled, they take her into their home and give her food and shelter.

Slowly but surely, all three of the elder Mrs. Wainwright's sons start to fall for the new addition to their home. Sibling rivalry ensues and each of the three young men does their best to win her affections. Things get complicated but she weathers the storm and just as it seems she's about to make a decision and move on with her life, an important person from her past shows up with the potential to ruin everything.

Having only remembered seeing Embeth Davidtz play opposite Bruce Campbell as Ash in Army Of Darkness I honestly had no idea what a competent actress she really is. Not that she's bad in AOD, in fact she plays her part very well, but there's a big difference between giving Bruce some sugar and playing a woman torn between choosing her one true love at the risk of devastating all involved. She carries the movie nicely, and fifteen to twenty minutes into it you not only start to care about her but also about the Wainwright boys.

The look of the film is very professional and the costumes, sets and background settings all work together nicely to create a rich atmosphere of Victorian-era melodrama. The cinematography is epic and sweeping and the camera movements are graceful and smooth. So with the look of the film so nicely defined, it comes as a bit of a let down that the musical score is trite and rather cliché. Some heavier orchestral music would have gone a long way to making us believe the emotional turmoil that these characters are going through, but instead the score is unremarkable and uninteresting. It doesn't grab you and pull you in the way a good score should, it simply exists and sounds rather vapid.

Overall, Feast Of July is a beautiful looking film with a downer of a story that will suck you in if you can get past some of the initial frumpiness that is ultimately associated with these types of films. It's worth checking out as long as you're in the mood for something downbeat, depressing, and emotional.

Video:

The anamorphic 2.35.1 widescreen transfer is nice and solid without any compression artifacts (except for some really, really slight ones in one or two darker scenes) and only the slightest bit of print damage. There is some mild edge enhancement that you can see in a few spots, but once again, it's minor. This isn't a perfect transfer, but it's a very good one.