A young, independent-minded Edwardian woman (Helena Bonham Carter) is torn between her feelings for the free-spirited romantic (Julian Sands) she meets on vacation in Florence and the priggish intellectual (Daniel Day-Lewis) to whom she becomes locked into an engagement with back home in Surrey in filmmaker James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant's Academy Award-winning adaptation of the novel by E. M. Forster. A massive box office hit that helped to propel more traditionally arthouse fare to the mainstream, A ROOM WITH A VIEW is one of the greatest—and most romantic—romantic comedies ever made.