Jane Austen (1775-1817) was a British writer, author of several of the great classics of English literature of the 19th century. Her work had to wait a century to be really vindicated, and both film and television have always had her as one of the favorite writers when it comes to adaptations. In the mid-1990s, a furor began that continues to this day. sanity and feelings, emma, pride and prejudice Y Mansfield Park they had one or several adaptations in those years. Movies and miniseries in turn boosted the reading of books. But it’s the first time Persuasion find a feature film format that is not in a series of adaptations.
Anne Elliott (dakota johnson) is a twenty-seven-year-old single woman who after seven years crosses paths with an old lover whom she abandoned due to pressure from her family. Anne, persuaded by them, left behind her great love but now she is determined to get him back. Ignored and belittled because of her age and her resistance to a marriage of convenience, she must break the social conventions that kept her from happiness. But will she be able to do it or will it be too late?
The script and the production decided that the subtleties of the book should be underlined and modernized in various aspects. The feminism that was implicit in the text has been exacerbated and a particular emphasis has been given to humor, in this case with greater effectiveness. But the very fashionable demagogic decision was also made to have a colorblind casting, that is, ignoring the race of the novel’s characters and putting together a diverse cast. This resource is a double-edged sword, since a story that is concerned with the rights of women in the nineteenth century ignores the racism of the society in which the story takes place. Nothing wrong with using colorblind casting as long as it is accepted that it is making racism invisible. It is an aesthetic decision for a work of fiction made in 2022, you can take the same freedom as any other work of fiction in history. And you can do it for commercial reasons and fashion, of course, that’s not bad either.
Although without a doubt the greatest risk of the film is another. From the beginning, the director makes the decision that the protagonist breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the camera. Although in the book the thoughts of the protagonist were also manifested, the story was in the third person. Here she tells us everything she thinks and does, of course with humor. It is very difficult not to think of an influence of the series fleabag (2016-2019) written by and starring Phoebe Waller Bridge. This resource, applied to a 19th century novel, has its challenges and its risks. The aesthetic modernization of period films can produce an insurmountable emotional distance.
The best ally to support this feature film is Dakota Johnson. The daughter of Melanie Griffith Y don johnson moves away from his role in the films of Fifty Shades of Grey and, as in the dark daughterlook for new horizons. Her sympathy and her humor, her role as an educated and intelligent woman suits her and she is finally faithful to Jane Austen’s novel.
