![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sadly Persuasion, not only the worst Austen adaptation but one of the worst movies in recent memory, delivers on all the agony and none of the hope. More recently, Autumn DeWilde’s 2020 take on Emma starred Anya Taylor-Joy as that endearingly pushy heroine, and just this year Andrew Ahn’s Fire Island restaged Pride and Prejudice against the 21 st-century backdrop of that queer haven. In 2016, Whit Stillman’s Love and Friendship reimagined Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan as a witty, bitchy sex comedy. Amy Heckerling’s classic 1995 rom-com Clueless transplanted the plot of Emma into a Southern California high school. But I approached Persuasion, Netflix’s adaptation of Austen’s final completed novel, thinking instead of the best-known phrase from that less-often-quoted work: “I am half agony, half hope.” Austen’s keen-eyed comedies of manners have lent themselves to countless effective adaptations, some set in the books’ own Regency era, some updated to a modern setting. ![]() It is a truth universally acknowledged that every essay relating to the work of Jane Austen must kick off with those words from the opening line of Pride and Prejudice. ![]()
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