Though I haven’t read the Kazuo Ishiguro novel that this James Ivory (director)-Ismail Merchant (producer)-Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (writer) feature adapts, informed sources suggest that the biting class commentary in the original is sacrificed here for a failed love story (1993). Certainly the two leads, Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, are adroit and compelling as the servants of James Fox’s befuddled lord and Nazi sympathizer, and Fox and Christopher Reeve (as the American who eventually purchases the lord’s estate) turn in fine performances as well. But Jhabvala’s tactics for revealing the lord’s Nazi sympathies are awkward and primitive, and the script’s violations of the butler’s viewpoint to show us more of Thompson’s life make for confusion. The actors keep this interesting, but as a story it drifts and rambles; with Peter Vaughan, Hugh Grant, Michael Lonsdale, and Tim Pigott-Smith. (JR)