10 March 2020

There will be blood

EMMA.

Crit
Title typography [sic]; see, it's a period film . . . OK, forgive them; the picture itself is much cleverer.

Anya Taylor-Joy is a perfect Austen heroine, and her Emma is perfectly dreadful, throughout the first several reels but especially at one dreadfullest moment; don't worry: you'll know it when you see it. Everyone does, even the dreadful one herself.

Brave of screenwriter Eleanor Catton and director Autumn de Wilde (and of Taylor-Joy herself) to turn moral ugliness to 11, but of course they still can't hide the inevitability of Emma + Knightly (Johnny Flynn). Oops, spoiler. But then you've read the book.

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