The Wings of the Dove

Instead of piling on distracting historical details and background, Dove trusts the audience to notice behavioral clues and fill in the blanks.

The Wings of the Dove flies high in a year when a whole lot of mega-buck movies barely got off the ground. It's exquisite -- and very adult -- entertainment.

In The Wings of the Dove, there is a fascination in the way smart people try to figure one another out. The film is acted with great tenderness. If the three central characters had been more forthright, more hedonistic, we wouldn't care nearly as much.

This adaptation of one of Henry James’s most psychologically rich novels works on its own lighter terms -- although those terms arguably rip away the very forces that motivate the James characters.