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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 1 MARCH 2020 8 FILM IT is a truth universally ac- knowledged that Jane Austen adaptations will likely continue to scratch the middle brow itch of the film-watching public well into the imminent days of the heat-death of the universe. It's clear that we can't seem to get enough of the genteel angst of young women fretting over marriage and its margina- lia while dressed in impeccable Regency costume as they sigh, swan, bitch and titter in delec- table country houses in the un- spoilt rural north of England. With the world in such a 'state', who can really blame us? The trick now lies in of- fering something resembling novelty, or at least a kind of stylistic verve that can just about pass as the shock of the new to sustain fresh adapta- tions. Because they will keep coming. While photographer and video artist Autumn de Wilde does not quite go for the twisty, subtle intellectu- al rigour that informed Greta Gerwig's wonderful recent take on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (if we could be allowed a Transatlantic period drama comparison), it is little short of shocking that her take on Aus- ten's Emma is, in fact, her fea- ture film debut, so assured and exquisite is its sense of staging and sustained comic timing. This sprightly, polished and gently spicy take on Austen's 1815 novel – the last of her works to be published during her lifetime – has been brought into shape by yet another cin- ematic debutante, even if they're very much decorated players elsewhere. New Zea- land author Eleanor Catton, who took home the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2013 for her second novel, The Lumi- naries, was drafted in to pen the screenplay for this new on-screen version of Austen's novel, whose protagonist has already been brought to life by the likes of Kate Beckinsale and Gwyneth Paltrow in the past. While the lines of where the screenplay ends and the rest of the film production takes over will always be blurry – at least in terms of who is to be laud- ed for what works and made responsible for what doesn't – one can't help but think that Catton's writerly affinity with Austen's work and legacy may have had a distinct part to play in crafting such a memorable take on familiar material, at least when it comes to the in- spired dialogue cuts and the positioning of the power rela- tions that underpin the Aus- ten's class-hopping network of characters. What's undeniable, however, is the utterly entrancing via- bility of Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular protagonist; possibly among the more challenging of Austen characters to get right without the audience losing all sympathy from frame one. Not to say that we aren't adequately prepared to approach her with the wry wariness she deserves, as De Winter begins the film just like the book does, with a condensed text crawl lift- ed from the very first pages of Austen's novel: "Emma Wood- house, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition […] lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." Ensconced in a society replete with shal- low chancers and pretentious arrivistes, Taylor-Joy's only adequate social sparring part- ner is her brother-in-law Mr John Knightley (Johnny Flynn), a member of her class who es- chews most of its pretensions, insisting on walking in favour of having a horse-drawn carriage Anya Taylor- Joy excels in this inspired and effervescent take on Jane Austen's 1815 classic about a vain but irresistibly charming socialite whose attempts at match-making wreak genteel havoc Teodor Reljic Low-key panic at the Regency country estate Strawberry fields: Anya Taylor Joy looks on to Mia Goth in Autumn de Winter's fresh take on an oft-adapted Jane Austen masterpiece