Brideshead Revisited

The movie is an evocative and poignant story of forbidden love and the loss of innocence, set in pre-war England when privileged aristocracy fell into decline. The story begins in 1925 at Oxford, when Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) is befriended by the louche and flamboyant Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), son of Lord Marchmain, and is quickly seduced by an exciting new world of money, glamour and outrageous behaviour. When he is invited to 'Brideshead', the Flyte family's magnificent ancestral home, Charles becomes infatuated with Julia (Hayley Atwell, pictured left), Sebastian's beautiful sister. But as Charles' emotional relationship with the Marchmain family deepens, he finds himself continually at odds with their deepest family bond, that of their overpowering Catholic faith. (BBC)