I Capture the Castle

Color, R (mature themes, nudity, sexual situations), 112 min., VHS rental, DVD $24.98

DVD: director's commentary

Street: Dec. 23; Prebook: now

First Run: L, July 2003, $1.2 mil.

Cast: Romola Garai (Nicholas Nickleby),

Rose Byrne (Star Wars:Attack of the Clones),

Bill Nighy (Still Crazy),

Tara Fitzgerald (Brassed Off!),

Marc Blucas (Sunshine State)

Director: Tim Fywell

COLUMBIA

Story Line: In '30s England, the Mortmain family rents a decrepit old castle and lives in poverty while patriarch James Mortmain (Nighy), an acclaimed author, tries to finish his second novel. Teenage daughter Cassandra (Garai) and older sister Rose (Byrne) hope the family's fortunes change when American brothers Simon (Thomas) and Neil Cotton (Blucas) arrive.

Bottom Line: Based on a 1948 book by Dodie West (101 Dalmatians), this sumptuously filmed romantic saga is wonderfully acted and lovingly realized. Sophisticated but not stuffy and filled with moments of tasteful sexiness and quirkiness, I Capture the Castle will appeal to audiences looking for an attractive story with classy adult acoutrements a la Shakespeare in Love and A Room With a View. The cast is uniformly terrific, with up-and-coming Garai, star of the soon-to-be-released Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights, memorable as the film's central character, a 17-year-old diarist who delights in chronicling her family's offbeat behavior. Also registering is Fitzgerald as a stepmother who delights in naked sunbathing for therapeutic reasons and Nighy as the down-and-out Dad with a buried secret. In some ways, this darkly funny depiction of a dysfunctional kin is akin to Wes Anderson's The Royal Tennenbaums but with a British accent. --Irv Slifkin.

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