The Delicate and Demanding World of <em>Emma</em>

De Wilde’s background is in photography and music videos; she has built a formidable reputation over the decades for imagery that is stark and indelible. That makes her a smart choice to recreate Austen’s fictional town of Highbury, the bucolic community that Emma Woodhouse (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) presides over like a gossipy, petty dictator. It’s a world where proper dress and good manners are paramount, where characters announce their entire personalities just by walking into a room, and where cutting insults and deeply personal observations can nestle within the most aimless small talk.

The setting de Wilde conjures is therefore appropriately delicate and exacting. It looks like a bespoke wedding cake, a series of fine estates in the rolling English countryside, each bursting with manicured rooms painted in different pastel shades. De Wilde doesn’t inject Emma or its atmosphere with the gloomy, windswept passion of later decades, as Wright did for his Pride & Prejudice. This is a place where politeness trumps loud displays of emotion, a bottled society that is easy to scandalize—to the extent that the individualistic Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn) is looked at askance when he dares to walk outside rather than travel by carriage.

In the thick of this tricky environment is Emma, a 21-year-old social butterfly who spends her days making friends, calming the nerves of her doting but agitated father (Bill Nighy), and trying to sort the people around her into whatever romantic pairings she thinks might catch. Austen’s story chronicles Emma’s growth beyond silliness and selfishness, but it’s also a celebration of froth, anchored by a character whom the author thought “no one but myself will much like.” There’s a reason the book mapped so neatly onto the materialistic Valley girls of Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (forever the masterpiece of modernized Austen adaptations)—it manages to wrap sympathy and satire into one delightful narrative.

Much of the plot of de Wilde’s film revolves around Emma’s new friend, Harriet Smith (a winningly awkward Mia Goth), who becomes her latest matchmaking prospect. Various fops and fools drift in and out of her social circle, including the preening vicar Mr. Elton (a very funny Josh O’Connor) and the self-satisfied dandy Frank Churchill (Callum Turner). Flynn’s performance as Mr. Knightley is robust and aloof, a great match for Taylor-Joy’s precise and biting charm; like any good Austenian hero, he offers insight and critique from the sidelines before swooping in to save the day.

Viewers of any previous Emma (or, indeed, Clueless) will know where the action is heading, but de Wilde and the screenwriter Eleanor Catton do not rush to a conclusion—and even though every frame of the film is as pretty as possible, they don’t spare the emotional wounds along the way. Instead, de Wilde’s immaculate aesthetic means the latter half of Emma can emphasize how the littlest disruption (a moment of rudeness, a dance declined) can send shock waves through Emma’s carefully calibrated existence. The final scenes are powerful in their relative stillness; this is no wild Gothic romance, but a tale where the truest satisfaction comes from everything fitting together perfectly.

David Sims is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers culture.