Movie Review: Emma.

Bonnet dramas are an institution in the UK, the way that the BBC keeps the classics alive, from Austen to Dickens to Gaskell. Sometimes the bonnets escape to the big screen, where they are necessarily concatenated but can offer either a bright sumptuousness or a gritty natural lighting, as the director dictates. While the nineteenth century could be a gloomy place, music video director Autumn de Wilde's feature debut Emma. offers a genteel rural paradise where the emotions are deeply felt, the servants audibly silent, and the houses impossibly large for only two people to live in. Jane Austen's fourth novel is brought to the silver screen for fourth time (including Clueless), and this incarnation crams the novel's charms while despatching with many of its blind alleys.