A Little Princess

Sara Crewe is left at a New York boarding school when her father goes to the First World War, and when news of his death arrives she is turned into a servant. It is Alfonso Cuarón's first American film. Emmanuel Lubezki shot it, and that is what people talk about: the colour and light in the storytelling sequences go far beyond the scale of a children's film. Lubezki was nominated for an Academy Award and the film was also nominated for art direction. At the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, Patrick Doyle won for the score and Bo Welch for production design. The adaptation leans less on Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1905 novel than on the 1939 film version, particularly in the ending. Liesel Matthews plays Sara in her first film, with Eleanor Bron, Liam Cunningham and Vanessa Lee Chester in support. The reviews were excellent, 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 83 on Metacritic. The box office was not: 10 million dollars domestically against a 17 million budget. Home video recovered it, selling two million copies by April 1997 for around 32 million dollars. Who it is for: families wanting a visually rich children's film, and anyone curious about where Cuarón and Lubezki began. Who it is not for: readers wanting fidelity. The ending departs noticeably from the book.