ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies.

MONSOON WEDDING director Mira Nair brings an unexpected flavour of India to her sprawling adaptation of the William Makepeace Thackeray classic.

Sporting an impeccable English accent, Reese Witherspoon uses her doe-eyed charms to keen advantage as Becky Sharp, the scheming social climber who navigates the hidden dangers of the English class system at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. A Who’s Who of British character actors play the various figures who impede or advance her progress as she becomes a governess, marries for love, plots for financial gain and maintains an affection for her one true friend, Emilia (Romola Garai).
 
Stealing all the acting honours, Eileen Atkins is on delicious form as an eccentric aristocrat whose liberal pronouncements conceal her deep-rooted conservatism.
 
Nair stresses Britain as a colonial power with repeated references to India and even one Bollywood-style entertainment performed by Becky for the delight of her lascivious, well-connected benefactor Lord Steyne (Gabriel Byrne). Its adds little piquancy to the drama and distracts from an already busy narrative.

Stretching her wings, romantic comedy specialist Witherspoon is winning and effective as Becky although the film is rather too keen on erasing the spiky edges of her character to make her more sympathetic to the viewer.
 
A screenplay adaptation partly attributed to Julian Fellowes (Monarch Of The Glen) captures elements of the biting wit in the Thackeray text but some weak casting in the male roles and a lumpy narrative make this a thoroughly respectable costume drama rather than a definitive version of the much loved novel.

VANITY FAIR
General release, selected cinemas

Director: Mira Nair
Writers: Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet, Julian Fellowes
Stars: Reese Witherspoon, Romola Garai, Gabriel Byrne, Rhys Ifans, James
Purefoy.
Certificate: PG
Running time: 141 mins
Country: UK/USA
Year: 2004
 

© Allan Hunter, 2005