Irvin’s A Month by the Lake is touted as a romantic comedy about how two lonely middle-aged people break their stiff Englishness and kiss at a picnic. It takes place at a hotel on Lake Como, and the story moves so slowly that it might as well be titled “A Month at Lake Coma.” It’s the same in H.E. Bates’s original story.
Vittorio Balsarei (Alessandro Gassman), Miss Beaumont (Uma Thurman), Major Wilshaw (Edward Fox), Signor Bonizzoni (Carlo Cartier) at their picnic on the grass.
Irvin’s picnic blanket is chock-a-block food so neatly arranged that it resembles a still-life painting. Unfortunately, the camera never gets close enough to differentiate the foods. But Miss Bentley does eat a ripe fig, a strong suggestion of sensuality.
Bates’s picnic is effusive: “For the picnic lunch, there were piles of cold pork and salami, pink stacks of ham, two dishes of pâté, a whole Bel Paese, large nests of hard-boiled eggs, much bread and two baskets of fruit, mostly green and black grapes, with a few last blue figs and big butter-colored pears. There were four flasks of Valpolicella to drink, white vermouth for those who preferred it, and mineral water for the angels [children].”
See John Irvin. A Month by the Lake (1995). Screenplay by Trevor Bentham and Josep Llurba based on Bates’ story (1964); H.E. Bates. A Month by the Lake and other Stories. New York: New Directions, 1987