Becoming Jane -- My Thoughts

Well, I've finally seen it. I have satisfied my curiosity. And it was about what I excpected it to be. Once again we have a major Austenian production and the studio is unable to leave unappropriate (and unecessary, IMO) references out of an otherwise clean film. I won't go into any details, but Tom Lefroy is depicted as having a skirt problem (amongst many other things!) and we have Northanger Abbey 2007 deja vu with Jane reading Tom Jones after Tom Lefroy has dared her to.

The music was lovely (and I loved hearing Hole in the Wall at the big dance, which I've loved ever since I heard it in Emma and Wives & Daughters) the scenery was picturesque, and the costumes were tolerable enough, but not historically accurate enough to tempt me. What was with the red apron worn while playing cricket? And the lack of hats and bouncing waistlines? Here we have a big to-do at Lady Catherine's er, um, Lady Gresham's estate and we have girls dressed as in costumes ranging from twenty years apart! I can understand the decision to have the working-around-the-farm dresses with old and out of date styles, but the ball gowns?

And then we have the austere-yet-loving aunt, who, strangely akin to the 1940 Pride & Prejudice's devation from the novel, is actually trying to help her nephew win his lady fair. And she is strangely clad in a dress oddly reminiscent of Judi Dench in the 2005 Pride & Prejudice -- purple 18th century attire, fuzzy grey wig and all. *shakes head*

( It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in posession of a good mind and no fortune, must be in want of a husband )