[Last Film I Saw] Emma (1996) [7/10]

Title: Emma
Year: 1996
Country: UK, USA
Language: English
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Director: Douglas McGrath
Writers:
Douglas McGrath
Jane Austen
Cinematography: Ian Wilson
Music: Rachel Portman
Cast:
Gwyneth Paltrow
Jeremy Northam
Toni Collette
Greta Scacchi
Juliet Stevenson
Ewan McGregor
Sophie Thompson
Polly Walker
Alan Cumming
James Cosmo
Phyllida Law
Kathleen Byron
Brian Capron
Denys Hawthorne
Ruth Jones
Rating: 7/10

In Jane Austen’s EMMA, our protagonist Emma (Paltrow) is a 22-year-old keen matchmaker in rural 1800s England, especially when she successfully acts as a go-between between her governess Miss Taylor (Scacchi) and the middle-aged widower Mr. Weston (Cosmo), at their wedding, she is determined to find a proper suitor for her kind-hearted but diffident friend Harriet Smith (Collette), this time her aim is Mr. Elton (Cumming) from a rich family.

Soon the match turns into mis-match, Emma not only sabotages Harriet’s promising wedlock with a young farmer for whom she obviously has feelings, but misinterprets Mr. Elton’s courtship and when the truth lays bare, Mr. Elton’s real intention is towards the busybody Emma herself, he leaves promptly and quickly marries himself off, the new Mrs. Elton (Stevenson) is a obnoxious snob, epitomises the quintessential importance of being recognised by those around, which is what every dignified person ostensibly but firmly clings to.

Poor Harriet is still single, but there are many things going on in the village, Emma is living with his father, her mother passed away and her sister is married, but Mr. Knightley (Northam), her brother-in-law, is her confidant. The next hopeful is Mr. Weston’s son Frank Churchill (McGregor), who is exuberantly charming enough to stir Emma’s uppity affection. Everyone involved actually is a pretty closed clique, soon or later, each of them will marry to each other on the basis of families of familiar backgrounds, whereas the leftovers, such as the spinster Miss Bates (Thompson) who is living with her deaf mother (Law), has to become the laughing stock with her excessive adulation and to keep her awkward predicament under her hat. Even though Emma contends that being an independent single woman is a fashion she is aspired to endorse, but she is only 22, what a wide-eyed profession!

Nevertheless, everyone has his or her own hidden agenda, in the Austenland, gossips are all-powering catalysts in their inadequate social entertainment, and a blunt incident of malice towards the innocent Miss Bates from Emma, delicately caused by her own emotional slip, finally sorts things out in its own manner, Emma begins to realise whom she really falls for out of a hurtful reproach from Mr. Knightley, and the rest is in the hand of a happy ending where each unwed deserves his or her own half, save Miss Bates, unfortunately.

A period costume picture strikes directly at my soft spot, and the overall performance is suitably orchestrated, Paltrow previses her triumph in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1998, 7/10) here she liberates a force of dearness despite of Emma’s inbuilt flaws, she is a young lass hobbled in her rustic vantage point, and a fetching soul awaits her prince charm to pay her dues; Northam would also reprise his good-hearted gentleman stature in AN INDEAL HUSBAND (1999, 8/10), a too-perfect and role model with impeachable moral integrity may fall into blandness, but he surely peps up the much-anticipated game-changer with his ear-friendly cadence. Stevenson and Thompson, both inject bountiful comical fodder to the innocuous farce, take no prisoners in their endeavour of mockery with a scintilla of detectable self-awareness.

EMMA recapitulates a mostly desired bygone cultural soil where satire and romance are embedded with ostensible proprieties and exquisite garments, a qualified Austen screen adaption indeed, leastwise, it is a lighthearted variant of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, only this time, there is too much pride and not enough prejudice to stir the entanglement.

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