The Merchant-Ivory team, responsible for "A Room With a View," among others, strikes gold again with "Howards End," another terrific ensemble drama, filled with irony and unexpected twists and turns. Like "Room," it is based on an E.M. Forster novel.

Set in the early part of the century, "Howards End" focuses on three families — the Schlegels, the Wilcoxes and the Basts — whose intertwined relationships affect one another in surprising ways.

The first character to seriously come to our attention, in a pre-credits sequence, is Helen Schlegel (Helena Bonham Carter), who has a brief romance with a member of the upper-crust Wilcox family, then mistakes his advances as a prelude to marriage and embarrasses herself.

Some time later, in a post-credits sequence, Helen has a comical run-in with the working-class Leonard Bast (Sam West), whose umbrella she has mistakenly taken. Bast becomes an acquaintance of the family, and his story provides a pivotal plot point.

But ultimately, Helen's older sister Margaret (Emma Thompson) will emerge as the film's central character.

When the aforementioned Wil-cox family coincidentally moves into a flat across the street from the Schlegel sisters, Helen, still embarrassed about her earlier social error, takes an extended trip abroad. Margaret, however, being an effervescent, gregarious sort, pays a call on the Wilcoxes and becomes friendly with the family matriarch (Vanessa Redgrave), who is quite ill.

It is Mrs. Wilcox's death early in the film that provides the single most important plot point, upon which hinges just about everything that follows. She scribbles a note in the hospital, a note that leaves her country home, Howards End, to Margaret. But Mrs. Wilcox's husband (Anthony Hopkins), who doesn't really know Margaret, conspires with his children to destroy the note. It is a spiteful gesture to keep Howards End in the family, despite the fact that no one goes there anymore.

Then, a bit later, Mr. Wilcox compounds the nastiness with an offhanded remark, which proves to be deliberately deceptive and sets into motion a series of events that will prove devastating to Leonard Bast.

"Howards End" is an exploration of British class distinctions, but it is also a complex story about how the people we meet in this life affect us for good or ill, and how we affect them. In that way it is somewhat comparable to "It's a Wonderful Life," on a more subtle level.