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Wednesday, December 18, 2024 |
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Wednesday, December 18, 2024 |
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| Vanity Fair |  |
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Mira Nair 
Reese Witherspoon, James Purefoy, Romola Garai, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Gabriel Byrne, Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins, Rhys Ifans, Eileen Atkins 
2004 
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Becky Sharp — lovely, witty, conniving heroine of William Thackeray's classic novel Vanity Fair — is brought to the screen, along with her 19th-century world of class divisions and privilege gained, cherished and lost. This adaptation of the Thackeray book, a sprawling critique of society in the 1800s, is the highest-profile English-language film to date from Indian director Mira Nair ("Monsoon Wedding"), and an admirable try. Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes ("Gosford Park") co-wrote the script, and the project attracted a first-tier cast, including Gabriel Byrne, Bob Hoskins, Jim Broadbent, Rhys Ifans, Romola Garai, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Eileen Atkins. But the pivotal role of Becky is played by Reese Witherspoon, with mixed results. Her Becky is funny and vibrant, yet more modern and less impassioned than one expects the character to be. Using her looks, guile and finishing-school education, Becky — orphaned daughter of a poor British painter and a French chorus girl — becomes a skilled social climber. A job as governess to the daughters of scruffy Sir Pitt Crawley (Hoskins) is Becky's entry into the upper crust; her marriage to Crawley's roguish son Rawdon (James Purefoy) is her potential downfall. Opulent in look, droll in dialogue and rakish in delivery, the film canters along. It just needed more emotional oomph than Witherspoon provides. | |||
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I'm Not There / Love In The Time Of Cholera / Gone Baby Gone / Delirious / 2 Days In Paris / more... |
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