Photo of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Photo of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

“Everyone is so estranged; no one is rooted. That's what I like to write about more than anything else. Everything being so mixed up. Racially mixed up, people moving from place to place, everything shifting.”

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    HOWARDS END

    JAMES IVORY United Kingdom, 1992

    Fans of Merchant-Ivory will rightly expect lush period settings and some of the great talents in British cinema—like Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Hopkins & Helena Bonham Carter. But this emotional epic of forsaken love also remarkably teems with rage at the class divisions in Edwardian-era England.

    QUARTET

    JAMES IVORY France, 1981

    Starring Isabelle Adjani in a four-way love affair, Merchant-Ivory’s impeccable adaptation invokes the sordid glamor of Jean Rhys’s eponymous novel. Waltzing through cozy cafés and sexy nightclubs, Quartet dines on the bohemian hedonism of 1920s Paris while exposing the callousness of the idle rich.

    THE BOSTONIANS

    JAMES IVORY United States, 1984

    Adapting Henry James’s tragicomic novel with precision and style, this lavish, Oscar®-nominated Merchant Ivory production revolves around a fiery battle of wills. Tinged with sapphic desire, the central love triangle delicately hints at the complexities of women’s suffrage in 19th-century America.

    SHAKESPEARE WALLAH

    JAMES IVORY India, 1965

    East meets West in this magnetic portrait of a traveling theater family, a breakthrough Merchant Ivory production that garnered Madhur Jaffrey the Best Actress Award at Berlinale. Set to a gorgeous score by Satyajit Ray, life on the road is dotted with thrilling encounters and bittersweet goodbyes.

    HEAT AND DUST

    JAMES IVORY United Kingdom, 1983

    Another winning collaboration with writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, this Merchant-Ivory gem marvels at the beauty of India while remaining critical of the Western gaze. Time-traveling between two intercultural romances starring Shashi Kapoor and Julie Christie, Heat and Dust simmers with feminine rage.

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