COMEDY AND CONSEQUENCE

Austen's ferocious wit fuels savvy, stylish Emma

You never think of a Jane Austen novel as excoriating. Hers is a genteel world of flimsy, gossamer gowns, impeccable breeding, and humorous observation of delicate romantic complications, or so we believe.

But her fourth novel, Emma, while set in the same milieu of tasteful gentility, and written with Austen's familiar ironic asperity, also bristles with savage social satire on upper-class idleness and the damage their thoughtless antics inflict on the people in whose lives they meddle.

The new movie adaptation of Emma, combines a savvy script from Eleanor Catton with a scrupulously assembled visual narrative from music video director Autumn de Wilde, in her impressive feature debut.

It's a more overtly comic version of Austen than usual — a pack of boarding school girls march in and out of scenes like a flock of giggling birds; eyes dart from side to side, or pop wide open in elaborate double-takes; baleful servants perform increasing complex choreography in long-suffering silence on the periphery of the action.

Taylor-Joy and Nighy: idle amusement

But when the filmmakers zero in on the machinations of their heroine, Emma Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy), they are unsparing in their critique of her folly.

The rich don't get much more idle than the Woodhouses, landed gentry with a country estate in the small village of Highbury. At 21, Emma has led a privileged life "with very little to vex her,” living with her widower father, Henry (the always welcome Bill Nighy).

Having just seen her former companion married off to an eligible widower to whom Emma had introduced her, Emma decides that arranging matches for others "is the greatest amusement in the world!" Although resistance to Emma's plans is never less than discreet (if utterly futile), we feel just how devastating the consequences can be for those unwillingly caught up in them.

Emma is not always likable in her wrong-headedness. But Taylor-Joy gradually earns our sympathy by giving Emma the grace to feel ashamed of her mistakes and outgrow them — especially after one of her attempted witticisms lands with such cruelty, it's as horrifying as any act of physical violence in Game Of Thrones.

De Wilde directs the well-heeled 1%

 Alexandra Byrne's outstanding costumes, male as well as female, are not only stunning to look at, their intricate layers — and the complicated ritual of getting in and out of them — also mirror the armor of social graces each character must assume every day in polite society. And Kave Quinn's lavish production design conveys just how well-heeled the Highbury 1% really is. Kudos all around for a very smart and stylish production.
(Read more)