Howards End

In the early twentieth century London, the upper class Schlegel siblings, Margaret (Dame Emma Thompson), Helen (Helena Bonham Carter), and Tibby (Adrian Ross), are liberal, straight talking people who indulge themselves in philanthropy and in discussions of the arts and literature. They begin an association with the similarly upper crust Wilcox family. The Wilcoxes, husband and wife Henry (Sir Anthony Hopkins) and Ruth (Vanessa Redgrave), and their grown children, are in London temporarily from their Hilton country home, Howards End, which has long been in Ruth's family, and where Ruth was born. Most specifically, a friendship develops between Margaret and the sickly Ruth. Their friendship is despite an auspicious past association between the two families, namely a doomed romance between one of the Wilcox's sons, Paul (Joseph Bennett), and Helen, and the fact of the Wilcoxes being more conservative and pretentious in their outlook than the Schlegels. In this regard, the Wilcox children take after their father, the children who believe Margaret has ulterior motives in befriending their mother. In a similar vein, Helen does not much like the Wilcoxes beyond her past association with them. At the same time, the Schlegels also befriend a man named Leonard Bast (Samuel West), a poor clerk, who has what Margaret refers to as a romantic ambition in life, and who has a strong sense of doing the right thing as demonstrated by his marriage to a woman named Jacky (Nicola Duffett), who he does not love, but to whom he feels protective. Helen in particular feels it is their obligation to help the Basts in whatever way they can. In their associations with the Wilcoxes and the Basts, Margaret and Helen take different paths to a common point a few years down the road.