By the time of The Wings of the Dove (1902), James was using brilliantly intricate stylistic effects to create (ironically enough) a new kind of realism, melding his theatrical sense of dialogue as narrative, multiple viewpoints, and dramatic ellipsis. A master of subtlety, he asks his readers to accept the responsibility of ferreting out for themselves what is happening in the story. Going even farther, James places many key moments “off-stage,” as in classical tragedy: expected scenes never materialize; the reader is excluded from certain encounters. At the core of his later novels is James’ belief that life is a process of seeing “the great things,” through awareness attaining understanding and, thereby, achieving, if not freedom, the illusion of freedom. Through his masterfully controlled obliquities he sought to force the reader to see for himself. He wanted his art to provoke life, not talk about it. If this demand has caused more than a few 20th-century readers to pass over James in favor of lighter or more explicit fare, it makes filming his major works an even thornier proposition.

Iain Softley’s version of The Wings of the Dove, like Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady, isn’t shy about taking liberties. For one thing, it is palpably condensed; and while at 99 minutes it is a welcome relief from recent period pieces which – wanting in accuracy of detail or spirit – seek to impress with sheer length, there’s an apologetic, Cliffs Notes feel to the undertaking. Softley dares to distill the essence of James’ novel rather than try to hoodwink us with an overstuffed Edwardian waxworks, and we can admire the effort even as we find it lacking. The foreshortening is also felt in how and when the primary characters meet one another: Softley’s shortcuts and compressions make narrative filmic sense; they just don’t happen – rather crucially – to be how James intended us to discover and come to know the relationships. And, finally, the key events of the denouement have been altered with cheapening, though not fatal, effects.

The plot is a melodrama (“vulgar” by James’ own description). It’s what he does with it – and what he would have us make of it – that pries open the big questions about human love and spiritual possibilities. Kate Croy (Helena Bonham Carter) is a pretty and penniless young woman taken in by her rich and scheming aunt (Charlotte Rampling) who seeks to marry her off suitably. But Kate is in love with the equally penniless and charming Merton Denscher (Linus Roache), a journalist. Kate’s aunt will cut her off unless she drops Merton. Kate and Merton happen to befriend an orphaned American heiress, Millie Theale (Alison Elliott), who is terminally ill. Kate asks Merton to marry Millie, who is in love with him, knowing that she will leave her fortune to him and that after her imminent death, she and Merton can marry.

Though despicable, the couple’s plan unfurls with James’ ironic sympathy for the economic determinism that entraps Kate. What they do not bargain for is the Jamesian “great thing” that Millie’s love for both of them evokes: her generosity of spirit and her capacities for love live on after her death – with profound consequences.

Much of the film takes place in Venice, where Millie goes when she hears the prognosis for her illness, and this is where Softley’s film has its greatest success. It captures James’ almost excruciatingly delicate tug-of-war between good and evil, life and death, spirit and flesh. Kate accompanies Millie and, soon, Merton joins them. As Kate says to Merton: “She didn’t come here to die, she came here to live.”

This brief season of glamour and tenderness, of duplicity and forgiveness, is mesmerizing. Softley’s graceful pacing and his use of revelatory close-ups feel exactly right, Sandy Powell’s costumes are very fine, and the cinematography of Eduardo Serra brings the golden light and rain-dappled shadows of Venice to ethereal life.

Helena Bonham Carter is more interesting here than ever before. She lets her voice nestle in a lower range and projects a canny maturity that is more watchable than the lineup of strident ingenues in which she has heretofore been stuck. Roache (who did a fine job in the title role in Priest) is perfect as Merton, intelligently sexy, at first cynical, ultimately vulnerable to the large lessons with which life engulfs him. As Millie, Elliott is pictorially correct – American as apple pie, with a sweet, fun-loving smile. Unfortunately, the actress doesn’t exude the magnanimity or spiritual grace necessary for us even to begin to see “the greatness” of which James provides such haunting intimations.