Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam
Call it a hat trick for Jane Austen. This past year she has scored three times, first with Persuasion, then Sense and Sensibility and now Emma, an affectionately deft adaptation of the English author's 1816 novel about a young woman (Paltrow) who, as a would-be matchmaker, is so busy tampering with the hearts of others that she fails to understand her own. (Austen's Emma also inspired the 1995 contemporary teen comedy Clueless.) Emma is first and foremost a star-making turn by Paltrow, whose character is self-satisfied, sometimes priggish, yet also warmhearted and vulnerable. Paltrow manages to be all of these at the same time, a feat that would be beyond most other young actresses. Hers is an intellectualized performance—watch the scene where her mentor (Northam) scolds her for being unkind to an old family friend, and you see the understanding of Emma's culpability dawn on her—but one with heart and soul as well. (And she has the longest, most elegant neck in films since Audrey Hepburn.)
Douglas McGrath, a humor columnist for the New Republic and coscriptor with Woody Allen of Bullets Over Broadway, makes a sure-handed directing debut (he also wrote the screenplay). In supporting roles, Juliet Stevenson is peerless as a snobby newcomer to town, Sophie Thompson and Phyllida Law (Emma Thompson's younger sister and mother, respectively) get a giggly, garrulous neighbor lady and her deaf mum exactly right, and Alan Cumming makes a perfect priggish parson. As for Northam, well, he's dashing and good-looking without being too suave, and I think most women viewers will own up to being smitten far sooner than Emma herself does. (PG)
Your Reaction
