Emma.

 

Fashion photographer Autumn de Wilde's Emma. is an admirable work, finely crafted and meticulously composed. Its production values are exquisite; each frame is a study, a tableau of near artistic perfection -- stately interiors of the 19th-century British country estates and the expansively verdant countrysides surrounding them. It's all just breathtaking. 

De Wilde directs an array of fully realized characters nestled in Jane Austen's mannered story space and led by the luminously doe-eyed Anya Taylor-Joy as the title character, a young and unattached woman of means who enjoys playing match-maker but is not particularly well-suited to the task. Her latest project is the school girl Harriet (Mia Goth), whose lineage is dubious but whose devotion to Emma is unquestionable. 

Circling around the two women are suitors with varying degrees of dexterity, played by Johnny Flynn, Josh O'Connor and Callum Turner. Screenwriter Ellen Catton's dialogue is as rich and sumptuous as the tea cakes gracing the parlor tables.

 

As marvelous as Emma. is in its entirety, I was especially taken by Miranda Hart's performance as the bounteously dithered Miss Bates, upon whom Taylor-Joy's Emma directs withering condescension. Of all the manor folk who populate Austen's beauteously appointed but frequently unmannered chambers and porticoes, Miss Bates is the gentlest and utterly without guile. Hart's depiction of this prim bundle of self-deprecation elevates every scene she's in. I was charmed.