Persuasion (dir. Carrie Cracknell, 2022)- Review

Yes, it's been panned as one of the worst book adaptations in living memory- but if you have the mental and physical wherewithal to kick back and slander Netflix’s take on Persuasion- Austen novel in hand, presumably on a chaise longue- this movie is simply not for you. It's for everyone else.

A lot of people have found themselves with a bee in their fetching Regency-era bonnet lately over this flagrant cash-grab of a streamer flick, which, by many accounts, puts a ghastly ‘Live Love Laugh’ spin on the memory of Jane Austen’s last, most sober work. The mental image of the development team- cackling as they fashioned this insult to God, this Frankenfiend of Bridgerton, Fleabag, and muslin-swathed Bri’ish ‘intellectual’ legitimacy- sounds like a screenplay in itself. The constant nods to camera, the squadron of impeccably sexy. yet diverse. sources of emotional succour: Persuasion has it all.

So far, so good. But let’s contextualise the story that everyone’s spluttering over.

As many a digital wag has noted, Jane Austen- born a full 250 years ago- has retained popular appeal through her effortless skewering of the ‘I can fix him’ trope, which blatantly shaped women’s financial security back in the day, and does so in a more circuitous fashion in the present. Basically, her women eff up. They quarrel; they age; they are fundamentally stubborn. Does this mean that they deserve to be ultra-processed into an excuse for the ‘messy millenial’? Of course not.

But part of this resonance comes from her own unconventionality. Upper middle class and Bri’ish she may have been, but Austen managed to get an education- eventually gaining some degree of financial and psychological independence through the success of her novels. Let’s remember that before big budget Netflix originals filled the shoes of pulpy mass entertainment, there were books and the theatre: a path taken by sharp-elbowed grammar school boys and royal mistresses alike, long before this century’s generation of bright young things. That route- treading the boards or writing for a broadsheet- no longer has its old financial security, but elements remain in the streaming age.

People who like Jane Austen already like Jane Austen. For those who don’t, the Netflix version- a genre in itself- tackles a glaring issue with bringing her work into the present day. Every problem in a Jane Austen novel is one that most people these days would kill to endure.

So off the casting directors go, with a mandate to manifest the most rabid pre-teen vision of ‘the good old days’ within their generous budget. Dakota Johnson is our Anne/Fleabag, bringing her trademark Hollywood kooky charm to the overlooked, quirky middle sister- broadly derided as drab, despite her literally starring in Fifty Shades of Grey. Go on, then. Richard E. Grant is her narcissistic father, in full liver-spotted Withnail mode, delightfully flanked by his bratty spawn. Mia McKenna-Bruce’s Mary offers peak guilty pleasure here, her lines rejigged to suggest that her ‘therapist’ has told her to practice ‘mindfulness’.

An insult to Austen’s text, yes. Hilariously accurate? Also yes.

In the digital Anglosphere, Merrie Olde Englande is basically interchangeable with futuristic dystopia. One has only to look at the Amazon Prime take on Lord of the Rings to see that the big old ‘duh’ of their grounding in reality- posh voice equals prickly and sensitive, Cockney Orc equals East End bruiser- remains welded to their current meaning. Now, in this post-Bridgerton hellscape after decades of buttery received pronunciation, drummed into the global repertoire as ‘hot but evil’, Persuasion has a lot to play with. After all, it’s the story of an 18th century girl-scape where the biggest problems, genuinely, were tea and piano, despite the existence of war, slavery, a greatest-hits list of STDs, and the like. All that genuinely didn’t- couldn’t- exist in a Somerset parlour the way it so ungraciously does today.

So as rich, hot, loaded Anne vacillates through her cache of Himbo-esque ethnic eye candy, it’s nice- for some- to be reminded that this is indeed a fantasy. ‘They’ve destroyed the text’, wail the detractors. Have a read of this:

“A few years before, Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early; and as even in its height, her father had found little to admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark eyes from his own), there could be nothing in them, now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem. He had never indulged much hope, he had now none, of ever reading her name in any other page of his favourite work. All equality of alliance must rest with Elizabeth, for Mary had merely connected herself with an old country family of respectability and large fortune, and had therefore given all the honour and received none: Elizabeth would, one day or other, marry suitably.”

Yeah, I didn’t think so. If you have the time and wherewithal, go home, seclude yourself within your bedchamber, and pore over the OG girlboss’s final masterpiece. Otherwise, feast your eyes on this.