Dir: Carrie Cracknell. Starring: Dakota Johnson, Cosmo Jarvis, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Richard E Grant, Henry Golding. PG, 109 minutes.
Autumn de Wilde’s Emma, from 2020, was such a moreish delight – it met Jane Austen’s wittiest and prickliest heroine on her own terms, defiantly selfish and loveable all the same. A confectionery construction of florals, pastels, and gilded frames, it found a way to satisfy modern tastes without betraying the authenticity of the Regency era. It remains one of the best modern adaptations of Austen’s work. I only bring this up because I can find no other way to describe Netflix’s take on Persuasion than this: it’s as if someone tried to recreate Emma from memory, but they’d only watched the film on a plane, and while the plane was experiencing extreme turbulence.
