lovely, just lovely, for awhile

Rating: 8/10 (2 April 2008)

A very pretty and engaging tale of redemption, whether we need it or not, rather wonderfully directed by Joe Wright, whose Austen I didn't think quite as much of. Christopher Hampton manages for the most part not to make too much noise clanking his quill against the ink bottle, leaving Ian McEwan's novel more or less alone.
The first half of this movie dances by like a whimsical reverie, sweetness and hope piling atop playful forebodings. It moans and runs a little out of breath at Dunkirk, but that's Dunkirk, isn't it? A fever dream of pure hot horror. Not the Mrs Miniver version at any rate. The remainder of the picture pants and starts, breathless and troubled, eventually waking to gasp in miserable regret at the nature of truth and the power of illusion. The story's early lightness is finally reconciled with its ultimately bleak ending, and all's miserable that ends miserably.
The women in this picture are uniformly superb. Keira Knightley is poised and fetching as ever, proof that God plays favorites - girls who look like this sometimes can have other gifts too. But the film relies most on three performances of immense depth and compassion: Saoirse Ronan, Vanessa Redgrave and in particular Romola Garai, all of whom portray the same woman at various stages of petulance and penitence.