emma film review 2020
Focus Features

Emma. Director Autumn de Wilde Makes the Period Film Cool

Chatting with the director about fashion, rom-coms and Austen

“I wanted it to be delicious,” says director Autumn de Wilde of her film, Emma.. The latest Jane Austen adaptation is, indeed, so lovely you wish you could devour it whole. Staying true to the Georgian-era setting of the book, the film is a layer cake of august, pastel-hued interiors, blossoming trees and costumes so stunning, you can’t help but point your finger at the screen like an awestruck child. 

de Wilde is a photographer and director, and her career shooting musicians and CD covers reads like the contents of my iPod circa 2007: The Raconteurs, Rilo Kiley, Tegan and Sarah. She’s also worked with fashion brands including Rodarte and Prada. Emma. (yes, the deadpan period, like every other detail in the movie is earned and intentional) is her first feature film. de Wilde was asked to pitch to direct the 2020 adaptation. “I just couldn’t believe it. I’ve been trying to make a film for quite a while and this was just incredible and exactly what I want to do. I had about a month to prepare for my pitch and I went deep into the rabbit hole of research.”

emma film review 2020
Focus FeaturesFrom left: Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson), Mrs. Elton (Tanya Reynolds), Mr. Elton (Josh O’Connor), director Autumn de Wilde and George Knightley (Johnny Flynn).

In the hands of de Wilde, who calls herself “a fashion history and etiquette nerd,” the story of Emma Woodhouse (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), a bored, well-off, witty and far from perfect girl navigating complex social traps of her own making, is fresh, lively and modern. Everything about it is dialled up to 11: Pained glances abound, but so does cheeky side-eye. The humour is built into the Austen dialogue, but also added through physical comedy and razor-sharp editing. 

It’s also an expert display of upper-crust 19th-century life. But it’s not historically accurate simply for the sake of it. “It’s fun to take things out of their time period and then play with them like rock ’n’ roll,” says de Wilde. The film cleverly uses the customs of the day, like the constant presence of footmen and the daily ritual of carriage rides for laughs. A running gag about Emma’s father (played brilliantly by Bill Nighy) and his fear of drafty rooms had the audience howling. 

The film is also a meditation on the private versus the public—after all, Georgian England, with its governesses and servants, was almost never private. “I heard that Jane Austen had a creaky floor that she never tried to fix and that’s how she knew if someone was spying on her,” says de Wilde. “We really don’t know what she did in private. That’s so exciting to me as it’s such a creative place to think. You know, what do these people do when no one is looking? We still don’t know; that’s the mystery of all humans.”

Fashion is a big source of humour and symbolism, too. “Fashion is so wonderfully weird, so being faithful to it gave us a lot of comedy possibilities,” says de Wilde, going on to explain the thinking behind Emma’s hair. “Emma’s curls are really tight and perfect. Then, the wheels start coming off the wagon and the springs are popping out of her clock. Those curls get a little fuzzier and you can tell that she has got more on her mind now.” 

emma film 2020 review
Focus FeaturesHarriet Smith (played by Mia Goth) and Emma Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy).

During my conversation with de Wilde, I point out that the film is full of common rom-com tropes—the meant-to-be couple that starts out hating each other, the sympathetic best friend. de Wilde agrees, “That’s what so neat about Jane Austen. She really had an incredible eye for iconic human dilemmas.” Seen though a period-film lens, these rom-com clichés are given new life. “The reason clichés are clichés is because they are very true. That’s how it is in high school in a small town or in an office. Those stakes are intended to be really high in the film because otherwise you look at the movie and think, ‘Oh, they don’t have any real problems, they’re rich and entitled.’ But everyone’s problems are really real to them.” 

The film’s B-couple, Emma’s best friend, Harriet (played by Mia Goth), and her farmer beau, Robert Martin (played by Sex Education‘s Connor Swindells), even gets the kind of super-romantic rain scene typically reserved for a main couple’s denouement (Andie MacDowell and Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral comes to mind). “I wanted to use things that were familiar in rom-coms in wrong places for comedic effect, but also to heighten the intensity of that romance. And we can’t enjoy Emma’s transformation unless we see Harriet’s transformation work out successfully.” 

Since its release last week, the film has been getting rave reviews and de Wilde tells me she feels excited. “I’m 49; it took a long time to get here. Women have made a lot of progress, but we haven’t made enough progress to be allowed to work if we bomb. Director’s bail for women is real.”

Happily, Emma. did not bomb—far from it. After initially opening at just five theatres in the U.S. it has expanded to 1,500 according to Forbes. “I love this movie,” says de Wilde. “It’s a very personal escape and it’s making me really happy to see so many people enjoy a break for two hours. It’s pretty rough out there.”

 
 

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