Emma (2020)

Directed by Autumn de Wilde. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Mia Goth, Bill Nighy, Josh O’Connor, Miranda Hart, Amber Anderson, Callum Turner, Connor Swindells, Rupert Graves, Gemma Whelan, Tanya Reynolds. [PG]

Latest effort to clear out the musty cobwebs festooning Jane Austen’s unflattering matchmaking frolic has a lush, sun-dappled look, and lays out the pieces in a calculated fashion that’s self-conscious enough to periodically camouflage how muddled the storytelling actually is. Taylor-Joy makes for a prickly protagonist, succeeding more at the crueler nature of the character than the prim gamine favored with slapdash romantic interests and misgivings. Debuting feature director De Wilde and scripter Eleanor Catton give the material a pleasant nudge with some additional slapstick and character precision, but it’s all too airless where a kick in the pants is what it really needed. Flynn’s roughhewn gentleman Mr. Knightley and Hart’s compulsively chatty Miss Bates have their moments, but it’s Goth who sketches her unsophisticated role’s texture most clearly (she plays Harriet). Title is stylized onscreen with punctuation (Emma.)—according to the director, the period signifies the fact that it’s a period film; makes one wonder why other filmmakers don’t follow suit with similar trends, such as displaying all kid’s movie titles in the Comic Sans typeface.

59/100