The Widdington sisters, Janet and Ursula, live in a picturesque coastal Cornwall, in a tight-knit fishing village in 1936.

A gifted young Polish violinist from Kraków, Andrea is sailing to America when he is swept overboard from his ship in a storm.

The presence of the musically talented young man disrupts the peaceful lives of the sisters and Ursula develops romantic feelings for the much younger visitor.

The sisters travel to London to attend Andrea's first public performance in Britain, while the rest of the village listens in on the radio.

[5] Longtime friends Maggie Smith and Judi Dench were appearing together in a play in London's West End when Dance first approached them about the project.

[10] Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote: "[Dench and Smith] sink into their roles as comfortably as house cats burrowing into a down quilt on a windswept, rainy night...

In this fading, sentimental genre peopled with grandes dames (usually English) making 'grande' pronouncements, the world revolves around tea, gardening and misty watercolor memories.

"[12] In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw observed that "despite a bit of shortbread-sugary emotion and an ending that fizzles out disappointingly, there's some nice period detail and decent lines in Charles Dance's directing debut,"[13] while Philip French of The Observer commented on the "beautiful setting, a succession of implausible incidents, and characteristically excellent work from Smith (all suppression and stoicism) and Dench (exuding unfulfilled yearning).

"[15] In the Chicago Tribune, Robert K. Elder awarded the film two out of a possible four stars and added: "[it] exemplifies that kind of polite, underdramatic Masterpiece Theatre staging that can either provide a surgical examination of English society or bore the pants off you.

[He] becomes sort of a blank character, a personality on whom we can impose our own curiosity and emotions... as compelling and original as this theme is, it's not enough to keep our attention, no matter how lovely the ladies in lavender are.

[17] Dench was nominated for the ALFS Award for British Actress of the Year by the London Film Critics Circle.

The violin music played by Andrea, including compositions by Felix Mendelssohn, Niccolò Paganini, Jules Massenet, Claude Debussy, Pablo de Sarasate, and Johann Sebastian Bach, was also performed by Bell.