Miss Potter

A biographical film set in England. Beatrix Potter is in her thirties. She lives with her parents in London, is unmarried, and her mother treats that as a problem. She paints. Rabbits, ducks, hedgehogs; all dressed, all with names. She wants a book published. The publishers do not take her seriously. One house accepts. They hand the job to the youngest brother; he does not know the trade and it has been given to him as something to keep him busy. Norman Warne takes the book seriously. The book sells. Then the next, and the next. From there the film runs two lines at once. On one side a rising publishing business, on the other a closeness her family does not approve of. Norman is the son of a family in trade. By the Potters' measure that is not enough. The mother objects. The father says nothing. What the narrative is interested in is not love but property: its real idea is a woman being able to make her own decision for the first time with money she earned, and buying land with it. The Lake District is the film's second half. Potter moves there, buys farms, and saves the land from being parcelled off. That land later came under national protection. The drawings come alive in the film. Watercolour figures stir on the page and Potter talks to them. That choice is the most argued-over thing about it; charming to some, too much for others. Chris Noonan made this eleven years after Babe; he directed no other feature in between. Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, Bill Paterson and Barbara Flynn are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes English period films and quiet biography. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hardness; the narrative passes quickly over the difficult parts and its general air is too sweet.