AllMovie

In the style of a Merchant-Ivory production, Thaddeus O'Sullivan directs the British costume drama The Heart of Me, based on Rosamond Lehmann's 1953 novel The Echoing Grove and adapted by Lucinda Coxon. The film opens in late '30s London at the funeral of a middle-class family patriarch survived by his wife (Eleanor Bron) and two daughters: prim and proper Madeleine (Olivia Williams) and free-spirited artist Dinah (Helena Bonham Carter). Madeline's businessman husband, Rickie (Paul Bettany), soon develops an interest in Dinah, which turns into an involved romantic affair. The love triangle causes many problems involving pregnancy, repressed emotions, and various forms of melodrama. Ten years later, the two sisters meet and sort out their relationship.