Grant, extraordinary as ever), and his apparent shopping addiction. When we first meet Anne, her family fortunes have dried up, thanks to her father, Sir Walter (Richard E. The film tries, in a detached, listless sort of way, to adhere to the original novel’s story.

But sidelong gazes at the camera, alone, do not a creative adaptation make. The film needn’t have been a modern re-telling, even we’ve had more than enough fodder in that department. As no Austen purist- Persuasion isn’t one of the Austen novels I’ve read, so I can’t be accused of snobbery in this instance-I desperately wish Cracknell had taken the sort of risks that have paid off in Persuasion’s dazzling forebears, such as Clueless or Bridget Jones’s Diary. Despite a talented cast, inspired source material, and the green-light-means-go rubber-stamp of Netflix, director Carrie Cracknell’s Austen excursion is never anything more than fine. Not that Persuasion intends to do much with any of them. In spite of this apparently all-consuming heartbreak, she is nevertheless game to deliver what’s intended as cheeky fourth-wall-breaking exposition, flashing the camera smirks as she introduces the ensemble cast of one of Jane Austen’s finest novels. “Now I am single and thriving,” a luminous Dakota Johnson relays as protagonist Anne Elliot, sobbing into the bathtub and suckling from a wine bottle. Perhaps the first hint that Persuasion is careening sideways sits less than two minutes into the new Netflix adaptation: The music, previously sweeping and melancholy, switches to a whimsical, cloying jaunt of plucked strings, staccato keys, and drum brushes.

Best persuasion adaptation