From the Jane Austen shelf, a cinematic Classics Illustrated. And altogether an agreeable comedy of manners, though hardly on course to become a classic in its own right. In its own medium, to be more precise. Ang Lee, of Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet, is the perhaps unexpected director of the thing. And it's something of a measure of the power of Miss Austen that her personality in the end submerses that of Mr. Lee: her clear biases, her fastidious apportionment of approval and reproof, overwhelm his broad tolerances, his predilection to see from everyone's angle. Emma Thompson, although quite expected (and expectedly adept) in the central role of the saintly Elinor, is totally unexpected herself in the job of scriptwriter. And in that capacity she manages to move matters along steadily, if at first a little abruptly, to and beyond the climactic moment that encapsulates, as well as any single moment can, the Jane Austen ethos, the moment for which a Jane Austen heroine, with bated breath, lives. "Do you compare your conduct with his?" inquires Elinor, typically concerned with levels and degrees of blameworthiness, of her chastened younger sister, Marianne. "No," comes the earnest and unironic reply. "I compare it with what it ought to be -- with yours." The portrayal of Marianne is the real revelation of the movie. Kate Winslet was not heretofore well enough known to arouse any expectations whatever, and her Marianne would seem to be worlds apart from her bloodstained adolescent fantasist in Heavenly Creatures. But at a second glance, perhaps not worlds apart after all, perhaps only one world, perhaps only a continent. The hotly romantic and highly improper Marianne, who fancies herself so full of emotions that she cannot possibly contain them, is the most modern character in the entire group, and consequently the most immediately sympathetic. And thanks to Winslet, the most deservedly so. Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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