Film Review: Another Austen favourite hits the silver screen with Persuasion
Cosmo Jarvis as Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion
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(PG) is the latest Jane Austen adaptation, which stars Dakota Johnson as Anne Elliott, a 27-year-old woman staring down the barrel of the dreaded spinsterdom and still carrying a torch for her first love, the impoverished Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis), who ran off to sea when Anne broke their engagement seven years previously.
When Wentworth — now Captain Wentworth — returns home, Anne allows herself to hope she might yet marry (‘the greatest blessing life can offer’), but Wentworth has set his sights on Anne’s best friend, Louisa (Nia Towle). Reader — will she marry him?
Adapted by Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow, and directed by Carrie Cracknell, this is an irreverent, contemporary — despite cleaving to the novel’s period setting, the script is littered with modern phrases (Anne’s vain father Sir Walter (Richard E Grant) is described as ‘fashion-forward’, the Elliotts are obliged to ‘downsize’ in the wake of Sir Walter’s lavish spending, etc).
Worse still, Anne swigs wine from the bottle, and directly addresses the camera with a slyly subversive appreciation of what we have come to expect from an Austen adaptation. The theory seems to be that if Jane Austen inspired , then Bridget Jones (and a pinch of ) can influence our reading of Jane Austen. It won’t be for everyone, of course, and die-hard Janeites may well swoon away whilst clutching their pearls, but Carrie Cracknell’s — as much a parody as an homage — reminds us that Austen’s novels are timeless in their forensic dissection of love, romance and the transactionary nature of marriage.
Cosmo Jarvis is a fine dramatic actor but here he can’t quite keep up with Dakota Johnson’s effortless flitting back-and-forth between comedy and drama.
(Netflix)
