Three families from very different backgrounds are thrown together when an aristocratic woman bequeaths part of her estate to a friend, meeting with outrage from her relatives. When the will disappears, the stage is set for a conflict with tragic consequences. Merchant Ivory period drama, based on EM Forster's novel, starring Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter.

A saga of class relations and changing times in an Edwardian England on the brink of modernity, the film centers on liberal Margaret Schlegel, who, along with her sister Helen, becomes involved with two couples: wealthy, conservative industrialist Henry Wilcox and his wife Ruth, and the downwardly mobile working-class Leonard Bast and his mistress Jackie.