Thanks a lot, Bridgerton: ever since you ritzed up Netflix with your boob-squashing, historically inaccurate corsetry and string covers of pop songs, it seems that authentic Jane Austen adaptations might be off the table for a while.
Fans of the 19th century author are expressing concern for a new film of Persuasion, starring American talent Dakota Johnson as Austen’s introverted heroine Anne Elliot. Thing is, she acts way more like the saucy, precocious Emma or Pride and Prejudice‘s feisty Elizabeth Bennett in the trailer below. Persuasion arrives on Netflix on July 15 and is currently available in select cinemas: here’s why it’s attaining some negative buzz.
The cast seems pretty blameless. Johnson does a great British accent, Henry Golding is just insanely genetically blessed, and indie musician Cosmo Jarvis makes a nice leap to love interest as Anne’s great love Captain Wentworth. Delightful Richard E. Grant is even there too, as Anne’s narcissistic dad (“he’s never met a reflective surface he didn’t like”).
But there’s plenty that’s a bit too reminiscent of other popular period and/or romance stories. The bunnies of The Favourite, acerbic fourth-wall breaking asides from Fleabag, the word “ex” which we feel can’t have existed in Austen’s 1817 vernacular…
The gossipy picnics on the lawn come straight out the last, lovely adaptation of Emma. But that was a very different film, based on a very different Austen text.
Written shortly before her death with a sombre focus on regret and loss, Persuasion is often hailed as Austen’s greatest work, and readers are not feeling optimistic about National Theatre director Carrie Cracknell’s light take.
persuasion is about love and loss and ageing and responsibility and devotion it’s not a joke it’s serious pic.twitter.com/H8p3ITqXRt
— niamh (@niamhcullenn) June 14, 2022
Indeed, an early review from The Guardian savaged Persuasion for its disrespectful “sassy romcom reading of the material”, requesting “comedy trombone quacks and an audience laugh track” for the insensitive humorous adaptation.
This is a famous passage from Persuasion, and Netflix has turned it into,
'Now, we're worse than exes. We're friends'.
Whoever wrote that deserves jail pic.twitter.com/w1wHiSwVBz
— Jennifer (@Jennipeg) June 14, 2022
Perhaps adapting the serious and beloved story in the same vein as Bridgerton and better known, fluffier Austen romances will encourage a new audience to check out the source text: hell, maybe Johnson and her dashing suitors will be charming enough to make the movie excel beyond this initial bad feedback.
Persuasion is hitting Netflix anyways whether regency obsessives like it or not. Hopefully we can be persuaded to enjoy it on its own merits?
