Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, David Lean's final feature trespasses on territory usually reserved for Merchant Ivory: EM Forster and India. But Lean was the master of the stately epic and, in this lusciously photographed picture, the 75-year-old director showed that none of his powers had waned. Stripping away the sheen of Raj life, he exposes the tensions, prejudices and snobberies of imperialism with a satirical blade every bit as sharp as Forster's. Oscar-winning Peggy Ashcroft garnered the acting headlines, but she is surpassed by Judy Davis as impulsive outsider Adela Questad whose disregard for the rules of the game shatters the calm of this Indian Eden.

Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.