Movie Of The Day: Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Joe Wright’s adaptation of Austen’s much-loved classic aims for a naturalistic approach to the material. Keira Knightley’s Lizzie Bennett is girlish, prone to giggling and sulking. It’s not a bad performance – far from it – but she’s not well served by Deborah Moggach’s script. The focus is almost entirely on the romance between Lizzie and the proud Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen; he’s no Colin Firth). Moggach concurs with popular academic opinion in highlighting Lizzie’s longingly long tour of Pemberley as key in changing Lizzie’s opinion of Darcy. However, this switch in feeling just doesn’t sit right with the rest of the movie and any pleasure to be had in the interactions between the two leads is from the novel.

The liberties that Moggach takes with Austen’s story is certain to anger purists. Wickham is reduced to a handful of scenes and the devastation that Lydia’s elopement has on the Bennetts is glossed over. What really impresses here is Wright’s direction, which conveys a feeling of intimacy which is far removed from the chocolate box visuals of other Austen adaptations. Whether it’s Lizzie and Jane talking underneath the covers at night, or the long shot through the movie’s first ballroom sequence, Wright’s direction at first seems at odds with the period setting but does, finally, make a sort of sense. As we see Knightley stomping through a muddy backyard after her best friend Charlotte has informed her that she is to be married to the uptight, unwittingly humorous Mr. Collins (a particularly well-observed turn from Tom Hollander), it’s clear that Wright is clear to highlight the gulf between Lizzie’s romantic expectations and the very real possibility of her family’s inherent poverty.

An interesting, if flawed, adaptation of a popular novel. Wright’s flourishes were to seem ostentatious in his second movie, Atonement, but this proved an effective stepping stone for Knightley as the yoof’s answer to Helena Bonham Carter.

Twilight

Following the phenomenal success of Stephanie Meyers' quartet of vampire novels, the film adapation of the first book in the series, Twilight, was bound to be a success. In a year oddly barren of teen movies, Twilight had teenage girls queueing up in their thousands to see their favourite characters brought to life on the big screen. What's perhaps more surprising is that Catherine Hardwicke's (Thirteen) adaptation is actually pretty good.

Bella Swann is a sixteen year-old girl with emo trappings who has moved from her mum's place in Arizona to stay with her father in the small town of Forks, Washington. Not quite the cheerleader-type, Bella is nonetheless bright and pretty enough to make friends easily, although she is unable to feel any real connection to her new friends. She quickly draws the attention of Edward Cullen, an intense young man who has the disquieting habit of staring at her throughout biology class from underneath his perfectly perfect eyelashes. As Bella is soon to discover, Edward is a vampire. But it's okay; he's a vegetarian. The Cullen family live on woodland animals rather than succumb to their predatory ways. However, any burgeoning romance between Bella and her vampiric beau might just prove too much of a temptation for Edward, who's all too aware of his desire to rip his girlfriend's throat open and drink of her pure virgin blood.

What follows is a chastened romance, full of brooding glances, swooping camerwork and an overwhelming sense of teen angst. Several reviews of the books pointed out their seemingly pro-abstinence agenda. However, coming from a director such as Hardwicke it's difficult to see the film in this way. As she showed in Thirteen, Hardwicke isn't afraid to show teenage sexuality in all its mucky details and although Bella and Edward don't "get it on" per se, the question of sex is never far from the surface and by (wisely) choosing to play the whole thing straight, Hardwicke creates a sense of malevolent sexual tension that is often absent from other movies aimed at a teenage audience.

The performances are rooted in reality, especially Kristen Stewart's jumpy, self-conscious Bella, and Robert Pattison (who's clearly been taking notes from the David Boreanaz school of acting) looks all set to be the new Zac Efron. There are some faults to the finished product, not least of all an occasionally clunky script and some dodgy special effects, but Twilight is a brave move away from the sort of glossy teen cinema we're used to seeing.