The genteel pleasures of Jane Austen have recently become a familiar commodity to American moviegoers--even if quite a few of them are, like, unaware of it. To wit: The sublime English novelist's comedy of manners Emma, published in 1816, was the inspiration for last year's teen smash Clueless, in which perky Alicia Silverstone stage-managed her high school friends' frantic social lives. It was, you know, way cool.
Those with no pierced body parts, however, might prefer first-time director Douglas McGrath's elegant cinematic take on the Austen original, not least for the shining presence of the emergent Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role. Box-office flops like The Pallbearer and Flesh and Bone hinted at this young actress's skills, but in McGrath's film, her comic timing and pale, delicate beauty find a perfect mate in one of the most engaging comic characters in British literature.
Emma Woodhouse, the high-born daughter of a doting country gentleman, is a classic Austen heroine. When she's not chasing butterflies in her father's sunny orchard or dawdling over dinner for twenty amid the splendor of candlelight and crystal, this cheery, self-satisfied 21-year-old is trying to orchestrate the romantic affairs of friends not unlike herself--girls with plenty of time on their hands and several party invitations on the polished table in the big hall. At movie's opening, Emma is aglow with triumph. She's just made a successful match for her beloved governess (Greta Scacchi) and has chosen as her next marital project her friend Harriet Smith (Toni Collette), a vain but pleasant lass, and the local vicar, Mr. Elton (Alan Cumming), whose crass ambitions are as obvious as his evasions.
The crux of Austen's satire, of course, is that her Emma is pretty "clueless" herself. Meddle she must, but her matchmaking is hopelessly clouded by her own vast inexperience with love, along with a touch of snobbishness. She imagines the obstacles she puts before Harriet and the decent farmer (Edward Woodall) who wants her hand to be "a job well-done." But the good-hearted Emma is one of the most self-delusional characters ever stuck between hard covers, and Paltrow captures her lovely blundering to a T. From furrowed brow to pursed lips to disarming smile, she's a satiric jewel.
Any Austen novel is also a mini-festival of tea-sipping and crush-swapping cemented by English reserve, and McGrath jumps enthusiastically into that bygone world. It helps to be furnished with characters as rich as Austen's. Willful Emma's circle comes to include the garrulous old maid Miss Bates (Sophie Thompson, sister of Emma), the beautiful but empty-headed Jane Fairfax (Polly Walker), a charming rake named Frank Churchill (Trainspotting's Ewan McGregor, pulling off a radical shift of gears) and the eventual Mrs. Elton (Juliet Stevenson), a social climber so wonderfully pretentious that you can hardly wait for her next self-serving gaffe.
Best of all, there's the suave Mr. Knightley (Jeremy Northam), Emma's longtime friend and the only human in their pretty little town of Highbury who sees both her goodness and her folly. Knightley is, of course, Emma's ideal match--another fact she has blithely overlooked.
Luckily, Austen was as much dreamer as satirist, and she loved to do well by her creations. So in the end, knowledge comes to most of these elegant if imperfect country aphorists, and wedding bells once again chime. There may be more substance and grace in an earlier Austen adaptation, the lovely Persuasion, but McGrath, Paltrow and the rest of this fine cast spice Emma with high wit and an easy playfulness that do justice to Lady Jane and keep the audience entertained for two solid hours. Director of photography Ian Wilson, meanwhile, has clearly looked at a Gainsborough or two, and production designer Michael Jowells and the film's other attendants to time and fashion provide as sumptuous and enthralling a re-creation of rural England in the early nineteenth century as has ever been brought to the screen. By the time our Emma's romantic machinations have all unraveled (indeed, we behold this bold Cupid missing badly at literal archery) and a bit of personal light has entered her own busy life, we are reminded of a shining, valuable fact ourselves: Some of the best screenplays of the 1990s still come straight out of the 1800s--quite some time before Alicia Silverstone got her first clue.
--Gallo
Emma.
Written and directed by Douglas McGrath. With Gwyneth Paltrow, Toni Collette, Jeremy Northam, Ewan McGregor and Juliet Stevenson.
