| Focus Features | Release Date: February 21, 2020 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
37
Mixed:
10
Negative:
1
|
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Critic Reviews
Movie NationMar 3, 2020
I can’t say this is head and shoulders above any other “Emma.” to come along. But de Wilde, her leading lady and her production team have made the matchmaker in need of her own match fresh and modern in a period piece detailed — right down to the acapella folk tunes and hymns sung on the soundtrack.
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With our current cultural moment so defined by protracted digital isolation—and its cousin, anonymity-enabled cruelty—the best thing de Wilde’s Emma. could do was lean so hard into the sublimity of Austen’s original that, for the entirety of its gloriously phone-free two-hour runtime, its audience might feel, collectively, transported. And that, it absolutely does.
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This new Emma doesn’t play too fast and loose with the story or its most familiar beats, but it digs out the absurdities of being wealthy (or adjacent to wealth) around the turn of the 19th century — the affectations, the frills that cover up the crudeness of real life, and above all, the vast, unmitigated boredom.
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With the help of cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, composers Isobel Waller-Bridge and David Schweitzer, and Alexandra Byrne’s spectacular costumes, the film captures the whirl of a predatory society that can no longer hide behind surface prettiness. That sounds a lot like right now.
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By simply putting forth Emma as is, with little argument or persuasion in either direction, de Wilde takes Austen’s long-storied notion that her protagonist is “a heroine whom no one but myself will much like” and antes up, highlighting the tarnished parts, the Emma Woodhouses if you will, in us all.
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The PlaylistFeb 20, 2020
This is the cinematic equivalent of eating a macaron, a bourgeois treat best enjoyed for its prettiness rather than its substance. But much like a good macaron, a well-done period romance – interesting, well-paced, relatively pro-woman – is a deceptively hard thing to make. This is one exquisite petit four.
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At its best, it’s effervescent. Leads Taylor-Joy (an inevitable future star) and Flynn (perfectly sad-eyed) are lovable and surrounded by some very funny supporting performances from Mia Goth as Emma’s friend and underling, Harriet, Miranda Hart as the garrulous Miss Bates, and Bill Nighy as Emma’s adoring dad.
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It’s still a clever-clever cartoon version of the book, with broad physical business in place of wit and Austen’s insights on gender roles and social hypocrisy tossed overboard. But I guess if the Empire waists are high enough and the male leads strappingly repressed, nothing else really matters.
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