Jane Austen’s <em>Persuasion</em> Meets the Girlboss Era
The trailer for Netflix’s new adaptation of Persuasion is truly a thing of wonder, a carnival of pratfalls, sly glances to camera, and anachronistic zingers. In a crowded field, my favorite moment is when it implies that no one has heard of Jane Austen—“the author of Emma and Pride and Prejudice,” we are told, as if audiences will react by going, Oh, that Jane Austen. The film certainly delivers on the promise of those two and a half minutes. This Persuasion has turned its heroine, Anne Elliot, from a quiet, melancholic presence to a klutzy Fleabag clone.
The British theater director Carrie Cracknell’s first venture into film is, to be fair, charming, well cast, and well acted. Cosmo Jarvis, as Captain Frederick Wentworth, looks perpetually on the verge of bursting into tears, which is for some reason incredibly attractive. Dakota Johnson’s English accent is irreproachable. The windy cliff tops of England have never looked more in tune with a heroine’s inner misery. But the scriptwriters
