Emma - Review

Emma

“Emma” is a 2020 British comedy-drama film directed by Autumn de Wilde, from a screenplay by Eleanor Catton and is based on Jane Austen's 1815 novel of the same name. Its story follows specifically “Emma Woodhouse”, a young beautiful and highly vain woman who lives in a large mansion on the Hartford estate of her elderly father in the village of Highbury. “Emma” has absolutely no wish to marry but enjoys pairing her family and friends together so her daily preoccupation is to find new ways to interfere and delve in the love lives of her many friendships, loves and heartbreaks with a mix of drama, dramatic humor and romantic sweetness in this latest adaptation of the Jane Austen’s book. It stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Josh O'Connor, Callum Turner, Mia Goth, Miranda Hart, and Bill Nighy.

REVIEW: Personally I consider myself a bit of an anglophile when it comes to all things British, especially in regards to the theater, movies, plays and culture. So generally speaking I am usually eager to see these type of throwback films where the men collectively project chivalrous masculinity with their innate traits of honor, courage, grace nobility and loyalty, while the women equally exude their feminine ladylikeness with innate traits of gentleness, empathy, humility, sensitivity, sensuality and radiance. And with a running time of 2:02 minutes “Emma” is luxuriously steep in these many human qualities.

But inspite of it being almost flawless with its textured execution of these many esthetic human qualities, I found myself spending far too much time waiting for these performances to elevate the written material itself; to make it evolve into a much needed display of emotional nuance that explained and explored what these interwoven characters really meant to one another. Instead, while “Emma” had the occasional compelling emotional moment, it felt overall like an exercise of untapped wasted acting potential. Only the lead character “Emma” herself came across as being sumptuously endearing and captivating to know, experience, to ever care about. Director Autumn de Wilde and her many actors appropriately delivered the humor, wit and drama when the material required it, but in the end their heart felt efforts too often only projected on the surface in well-dressed 1800's attire just layerless stick figures characters with lovely British accents devoid of any meaningful human depth and emotional connectedness.

“Emma” looked fresh, looked uniquely reimagined and sounded virtuously charming, ultimately it's a fresh and pretty coat of colorful cinematic paint on a wasted good story.

2.00 Stars