Persuasion review: Jane Austen gets reworked for the Instagram age, and suffers for it

We are living in the age of Revisionist Jane, a truth universally acknowledged by the cascade of Austen adaptions pumped out by studios and streaming services with almost head-spinning frequency over the last few decades. So far, there doesn't seem to be an end to the ways her timeless romances can be tweaked and parlayed by the Hollywood machine. So why does Persuasion (on Netflix July 15) feel more like blasphemy than all the fizzy Fire Island updates and Beverly Hills teens that preceded it?

The book's Regency-era costumes and country manors at least arrive intact, and Dakota Johnson, her hair prettily curled and cadences polished, makes for a vivacious Anne Elliot: twentysomething spinster, neglected middle daughter of the English aristocracy, lover of novels and long walks. Then, alas, she starts talking: Directly to the camera, as frequently and casually as Fleabag, or between swigs of Merlot, while throwing off lines like "I'm single and thriving." (The movie stops just short of giving her one of those "Wine Flies When You're Having Fun" or "Corks Are for Quitters" throw pillows, which seems like a remarkable act of self-restraint considering what follows.)

Anne has a father, a dimwitted peacock played by the great Richard E. Grant, and two insufferable sisters, the oblivious snob Elizabeth (Yolanda Kettle) and peevish Mary (Mia McKenna-Bruce), both monuments to Kardashian self-absorption. She also once had a true love, naval officer Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis), but he had no money or prospects, so she refused his proposal on the advice of her late mother's best friend, the well-meaning Lady Russell (Nikki Amuka-Bird). Seven years later, he returns, and so do the feelings between them — along with several competitors for their respective affections, including a dashing, disreputable cousin (Crazy Rich Asians' Henry Golding) and the luminous ingenue Louisa (Nia Towle).

This is all essentially true to the basic premise of Persuasion, Austen's last completed novel, though the script veers off from there in a flurry of fourth-wall breaks and rom-com familiarity: When Wentworth finds out that Anne was once proposed to by her future brother-in-law before he married Mary, it's not because a relative tells him but because Anne blurts it out drunk at the dinner table; going through old keepsakes, she refers to a pile of musical scores as "a playlist he made me." Certain secondary roles have intriguing edges, then get nudged so far into satire that they just become silly — like Golding's William, which has the dapper actor essentially playing a tail-coated contestant on F-Boy Island.

Jarvis (Lady Macbeth) makes for a dashing hero with his die-cut jawline and Byronic sweep of hair, and Johnson is so naturally charming she nearly sells the idea of an Anne more suited to a high-concept dating show than the ball gowns and drawing rooms of Regency England. The script, by Ronald Bass (Rain Man, Waiting to Exhale) and Alice Victoria Winslow, crackles and pops when it's not trying so hard to lather every line of dialogue in Tiktok zingers and bitchy bits of flair. (When one character smirks, "It is often said that if you're a five in London, you're a 10 in Bath," a kitten dies somewhere.)

It's never really clear why director Carrie Cracknell, whose resumé is primarily in British theater, felt compelled to portray the setting so faithfully and with such high production values — some artistic debt certainly seems owed to the rolling moors and sun-dazzled closeups of Joe Wright's 2005 Pride & Prejudice — but put so little trust in the actual text, or at least in her viewer. She might have gone the way of Wright's soulful update, or even that of Autumn de Wilde, whose 2020 Emma starring Anya Taylor-Joy looked like candy but retained the wit and spirit of the book's original dialogue. Instead, this Persuasion chooses to wear its source material like a thin disposable skin, discarding many of the vital organs (brain, heart) and most ideas of subtlety as it goes. Austen may be immortal, but she's not inexhaustible; maybe it's time to tell another story and let her rest in peace. Grade: C+

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