DAKOTA JOHNSON as ANNE ELLIOT in PERSUASION. Photo Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix © 2021
Preston Barta // Features Editor
PERSUASION
Rated PG, 110 minutes.
Now available to stream on Netflix.
Modern touches to Jane Austen and other period works have been the craze lately, especially after Autumn de Wilde’s Emma. and Alena Smith’s three-season series Dickinson, both of which cracked with an electric fever. Now, Netflix wants to play dress-up with some hot tea in hand and a few winks at the camera. Unfortunately, however, as promising as a Dakota Johnson-starring adaptation of Austen’s final novel sounds, this take on Persuasion is a messy, real yawn of a movie.
Directed by Carrie Cracknell, the film centers on Anne Elliot (Johnson), a woman in her late twenties who has remained single since breaking off her engagement seven years ago to poor sailor Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis). She chugs wine at every opportunity and gets her jollies from her family’s misfortunes (and rolling her eyes at the camera). The Elliot family (including the great Richard E. Grant) face financial hardship. They are forced to relocate from their established, sophisticated estate to a house in Bath. Not long after, Anne runs back into Wentworth, a now self-made success. Thus begins a slow game of will-they-won’t-they.
Cracknell, best known for her National Theatre Live works (2016’s The Deep Blue Sea and 2018’s Julie), is completely capable of properly staging sets and injecting works with whip-pan energy. But, somehow, the pieces didn’t fall into place here. Persuasion has little faith in its own plotting to make its fourth-wall-breaking action feel less like a gimmick and more like a fun storytelling tool that pulls us into the romance. The camera is too often still, quickly distinguishing any moment of spark (like Henry Golding as Anne’s romantic rival and, uh, cousin). And the costume design doesn’t seem period accurate, begging the question of why they didn’t make this a straight-up contemporary work (a la Fire Island) instead of one at odds with itself.
Persuasion is in serious need of a narrative defibrillator or just a touch of sincerity. It may be enough to charm those OK with lukewarm romances, but we (and the talent involved) deserve much better. This is remarkably unremarkable. (Please, watch Emma. or Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship instead!)
Grade: C
