Persuasion (2022)

Score: 2.5 / 5

I'm not always a purist with this kind of stuff. Frankly, I rather enjoy when someone recreating an often-adapted or historically popular work adapts it with some anachronistic updates. Consider Joe Wright's Anna Karenina or the recent Emma., both of which revel in their own stylized approach to otherwise familiar material. I'm less fond of full remakes in different settings -- Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You and She's the Man are just not my cup o' tea, though I confess myself partial to Cruel Intentions and Bridget Jones's Diary, among some others -- but sometimes they can really hit it out of the park, such as this year's Fire Island (review forthcoming). Thankfully, the latest adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion sticks pretty close in appearance to its source material. Regrettably, it's also a bit of a tonal mess.

Carrie Cracknell, a modestly famous British theatre director, directs this film as her debut, and it's a mixed bag of results. I couldn't help but feel that she watched a bit too much Bridgerton and Fleabag before starting this project, especially given the apparently colorblind casting (or, perhaps more generously, color-intentional casting) and the protagonist's penchant for breaking the fourth wall and narrating to us directly. Dakota Johnson plays Anne with no shortage of energy and skill, but it never quite feels period appropriate; apart from her occasionally shaky accent work, her wit and dry humor feel a tinge too postmodern-y millennial rather than Regency era. She drinks red wine from the bottle and throws herself around from bathtub to bed (facedown) while drily commenting that she's "thriving" and rolling her eyes at the silly and vain people around her. It's actually very funny in an understated and nuanced way, and I'd have liked to see this side of Johnson in another movie that knows how to harness this brand of comedy.

I say comedy specifically because the early half of this film -- as with most Austen stories -- can be played firmly for laughs. The romance in this adaptation is, sadly, much less exciting, and as one of the more staunchly romantic stories in her canon (perhaps due to Anne's comparably mature demeanor and motivations) it falls rather flaccid when push comes to shove. When Frederick Wentworth showed up, I immediately didn't care about her relationship with him because he's utterly loathsome here. Played by Cosmo Jarvis, he's stiff and obtuse, exuding almost no energy and feeling more like a black hole on the screen. I got none of the charisma or intrigue that would make a character like Anne -- or Johnson, for that matter -- melancholy and obsessive over the thought of loving him. Their complete lack of chemistry is enough to make this viewer feel as though her family was right in persuading (it's the title, y'all) her to dump his ass several years previously. 

Thankfully, there are a few bright spots here. Johnson is really lovely to see working here, out of her usual repertoire. Her father, the vain and free-spending Sir Walter Elliot, is brought to voluptuous life by Richard E. Grant in all his glory. Mia McKenna-Bruce is very funny as Mary, the narcissistic younger sister, and Nia Towle is really lovely as Louisa, the sister-in-law. Nikki Amuka-Bird is electrifying as Lady Russell, and when Henry Golding graces the screen as Mr. Elliot, he revamps the whole movie. He's gorgeous, she's gorgeous, they have effortless chemistry, and frankly I wanted them to run away together because that's the problem with putting intellectual/social romances on screen. We want more eye candy than head candy, so to speak. And, of all the technical elements that are nice but generally immaterial, the cinematography from Joe Anderson (The Old Man and the Gun) is cool and dreamy, filled with the sort of shots that made this kind of movie so popular since Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice in 2005. But the endless narration and chaotic anachronisms -- a "playlist" Wentworth made for Anne is in fact a stack of sheet music, which made me dry heave -- make this movie a lot harder to swallow than I expected or wanted.