The Remains of the Day

“Diamond in the Rough.”

James Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) wants one thing from his life: to be a perfect butler, running the household of Lord Darlington (James Fox) in interwar Britain without a wrinkle in the silver or the routine. Then Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson) arrives as the new housekeeper, and James Ivory films the two of them meeting in corridors, over cocoa, across closed doors. Her warmth keeps pressing against his formality, and neither one will say what is between them.