AwardsWatch - Film Review: ‘Emma.’ Period. End of Sentence.

Film Review: ‘Emma.’ Period. End of Sentence.

Jason Adams February 19, 2020

Mia Goth (left) as Harriet Smith and Anya Taylor-Joy (right) as Emma Woodhouse in director Autumn de Wilde’s EMMA. (Photo: Focus Features)

The character of Jane Austen’s Emma has always been a bit of a pain in the bum. She’s a bored rich girl who can’t stop sticking her nose into other people’s business and rifling around for sport — all the better, we gather, to ignore her own glaring issues with intimacy. Mr. Knightley whom? The adaptations that have come over the years, most notably with the one-two punch that was Amy Heckerling’s masterpiece Clueless in 1995 and then Douglas McGrath’s lovely but more straightforward adaptation starring Gwyneth Paltrow a year later, have always had to wrestle with this — Emma (or Cher as the case may be) always needs to dapple with charm and wit, so our time spent with her doesn’t feel like a chore. We don’t want to feel like we’re having a catty brunch with Ivanka. Ever. The Mean Girl cliff doth lie precarious here.

Out in select theaters this weekend, Autumn de Wilde’s Emma. — the period is for, I don’t know, the end of romance itself? — starring Anya Taylor-Joy in the lead, kind of feels like it’s flung itself lustily right off the edge of that Mean Girl cliff. Taylor-Joy’s Emma Woodhouse, outfitted like the high priestess of pomp and bonnets and ringlets and circumstance, marching herself into an intimate war of matchmaking frenzy, comes off best described as a cold-eyed sociopath. She’s a petit four with fangs; a confectionary cautionary tale.

More akin to Glenn Close’s manipulative Marquise in Dangerous Liaisons, I was never sure if I was supposed to be rooting for this creation, or if I ought to be mortified for every poor unfortunate soul that fell into her calculating orbit. Ultimately, unfortunately, I don’t think the movie is sure either. It’s an admittedly gorgeously costumed and shot film with a load of character actors to like — Bill Nighy is typically a treat, and all of the somewhat interchangeable boys are cute enough — that seems to vertiginously swirl around an empty center; Emma as existential horror stuffed into our candied pink hearts.

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Jason Adams

Jason knew the movies were his bag the second he saw that lawyer sitting on a toilet getting eaten by a Tyrannosaur, and he's never looked back once since. Simultaneously a movie snob who watches Fassbinder for fun while also being a trash apologist prone to reenacting the death scenes in the Friday the 13th series through vivid pantomime, he's got room for everything projected onto a big screen in his big roomy heart. He's been covering the daily beat on his site My New Plaid Pants since 2005 and is a regular contributor to The Film Experience. He's a member of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and has been accredited to cover basically every New York City based film festival for the past ten years including NYFF and Tribeca. You can follow him on Twitter at @JAMNPP