“He’s a 10,” the leading lady enthuses to an older woman about a young man she fancies in this latest screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s final novel — and if that line doesn’t throw you for at least a small loop, there are other mightily anachronistic ingredients in this new Persuasion Austen fans may find this a little unpersuasive. Breaking down and eradicating period niceties and replacing them with more modern attitudes and phraseology appears to be the central agenda for prominent British theater director Carrie Cracknell in her feature film debut, and while it’s easy to resist some of the cheap-shot modern dialogue that runs through the adaptation by old pro Ron Bass and writer-actress Alice Victoria Winslow, it also shouldn’t be impossible to admit that, since we already have Roger Michell’s outstanding 1995 film adaptation, a cheeky redo might also be welcome, at least for a short stay.
This Netflix film follows in the recent footsteps of Julia Quinn’s eight massively successful BridgertonBooks, which were published from 2000 to 2006. These became the basis for the streamer’s very popular television series of 2020, which reset the rules of the British period melodrama by casting actors of a variety of hues in customarily white roles. Regency-set follows suit in the same vein as Austen’s new projects. Mr. Malcolm’s ListA very loosely based version of Pride and Prejudice, a book that even more freely inspired Hulu’s current gay-slanted attraction Fire Island. This Persuasion similarly suggests that shaking up the genre with ahistorical moves in casting and dialogue, as well as with confidential, breaking-the-fourth-wall remarks, need not necessarily distract from the melodramatic fun and may even bump it up at times. Merchant Ivory-styled adaptations of old titles are best left to the rear-view mirror.
“I almost got married once,”Anne Elliott, a passionate and persuasive Dakota Johnson, admits in awe at the start, but then self-deprecatingly adds that she, at the “advanced”Age 27 “I’m waiting to fall in love.” In further confidences quickly disclosed, she reveals that Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis) and her mother are the only people who ever understood her, but that Wentworth—the “10” in question—“is a ship that has sailed,”It turns out that he was literally right, since he is now in the navy.
Kellynch Hall is where the Elliott family resides, and they were once quite wealthy. The situation is one that Sir Walter, the ever-welcome Richard E. Grant, seems determined to ignore. “What good is anything if you have to earn it?”He sneers and complains. Austen is known for his lively banter and repartee. Anne laments her life situation with humor and no self-pity. Did you know that Jane Austen characters would suddenly announce a sudden need to relieve themselves by the side of the road while on a country walk with friends? History will decide if this is progress.
In the way Olde England is shown in the movies, things have changed indeed. But however one might chafe at some of the liberties taken, this adaptation is so fundamentally lively and playful that it would seem churlish to complain too mightily; many great authors have endured far worse at the hands of less talented screenwriters and directors who have taken their tasks very seriously, so perhaps it’s not such a dreadful literary trespass for filmmakers to have a little irreverent fun with Austen rather than to maintain absolute and straight-faced fidelity.
The gist of the drama lies in whether Anne will ever be able to fall in love again or might already have missed her chance (Austen, it may be remembered, never married, but was once briefly engaged—at 27). As fate, or Austen, would have it, Wentworth’s older sister Elizabeth (Yolanda Kettle) is currently ensconced at Kellynch Hall, which means that, for better or worse, the undercurrents of feeling and possibilities of reviving the romance will be undeniable. Then there is Anne’s self-dramatizing younger sister Mary Musgrove (Mia McKenna-Bruce) and Lady Russell (Nikki Amuka-Bird), who is the one who convinced Anne not to marry Frederick in the first place. In his sporadic appearances, Jarvis unquestionably cuts an extremely handsome figure, but he doesn’t actually have all that much to do, so it’s impossible to evaluate his screen potential from this venture.
You can practically hear director Cracknell cracking the whip on the actors to keep up the pace, to the extent that there’s scarcely a leisurely moment to be found in this propulsive, if somewhat scattershot and sometimes misguided, entertainment. Johnson is a welcome presence, and he plays a part in the inspired, but sometimes misguided, aspects of the production. It’s unfaithful fun.