Quartet (1981)

The partnership at its least genteel. Adapted from Jean Rhys's 1928 novel and set in 1927 Paris, it follows a young woman whose husband is jailed for selling stolen art, leaving her to lodge with an English couple whose hospitality has a price. Isabelle Adjani won Best Actress at Cannes for this and Possession together, and Alan Bates and Maggie Smith make the hosts' polite cruelty genuinely uncomfortable. Choose it to see how unsentimental Ivory could be about manners used as a weapon.