Persuasion is a period drama based on the Jane Austen book of the same name. Years after being persuaded by a family friend to decline the proposal of Captain Wentworth(Cosmo Jarvis) for financial reasons Anne(Dakota Johnson) and her family are in financial trouble and Captain Wentworth's prospects have changed for the better. The two embark on a protracted will-they-won't-they circling.
All the actors have talent, that's no question, and some make out decently but for the most part it is the tone that causes the movie to fail. Having not read it I can't speak to the faithfulness of the adaptation but it is more somber than some of Austen's other work, the characters blatantly unlikable even exceedingly irritating, avaricious, petty, in short boring. Anne, here, doesn't have the poise or depth or fundamental engagement of the typical Austen hero. On top of this there are some clunky modern devices inserted that simply don't work. There is painful direct address and one of Anne's main(but really uninvestigated) character traits is that she's an alcoholic? It's bizarre. In a baffling turn for an Austen adaptation the characters are, almost universally, shallow, vapid, and uncompelling. They have virtually no interiority which is key to Austen's work.
The production is top notch- costumes, set, score- but without any real narrative soul it doesn't matter. It's not terrible just unnecessarily dour and thin.
Like a saltine.
Currently streaming on Netflix.
Don't See It.
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