Emma

Emma Woodhouse is wealthy, clever and bored. She finds herself an occupation: marrying off the people around her. She counts her governess's marriage as her own achievement and decides to continue. She takes a young woman called Harriet under her wing and will find her a suitable husband. Harriet has a choice of her own but Emma does not find it suitable and steps in. Then she finds another candidate and that one is wrong too. Emma spoils something with every intervention and does not see it. Her close friend Mr Knightley warns her. Diarmuid Lawrence directs; Andrew Davies wrote the screenplay. Kate Beckinsale plays Emma; Mark Strong, Samantha Morton and Raymond Coulthard are in the cast. The source is Jane Austen's novel. It was made for British television, and another adaptation of Emma came to cinemas the same year; the two were constantly compared. Andrew Davies wrote a run of Austen adaptations in this period and those scripts set the shape. The matter it treats is class; Emma's interventions are a question of position rather than good will, and the film underlines it. The adaptation keeps the harvest and the servants from the novel; the rural economy stays visible. Kate Beckinsale's reading does not make the character likeable, and the choice was argued over. Its limit is length; the novel is compressed into roughly two hours and some strands are shortened. Who it is for: viewers who like Austen adaptations and British period productions. Who it is not for: the television scale shows, the pace is fast, and there are many characters.