Cross-cutting between the 1920s and the 1980s, Merchant Ivory’s epic of self-discovery is also a lush evocation of the sensuous beauty of India. It interweaves a young Englishwoman’s journey of discovery in the present-day India with a scandalous incident of family history, set in the 1920s in the Civil Lines of a backwater Indian state. Anne, a young historical researcher, inherits letters written by her great aunt Olivia, and becomes obsessed with their revelation of an exotic and sensual past. Amid the contrasting landscapes of the Deccan, Kashmir and London, this film – high spirited and romantic – deals with both the colonial and ‘Indian’ India.

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