ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 23, 1995 TAG: 9512270062
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
The most hard-earned, most erotic kiss on film this year lasts less than two seconds and requires a setup of almost two hours.
That is the kiss at the end of Roger Michell's film adaptation of Jane Austen's "Persuasion."
And the anticipation is almost unbearable, so beset are Anne Elliot and Capt. Frederick Wentworth by the aggravation of family, friends and the social demands of life in early 19th-century England.
Almost unbearable. Which means, pure pleasure.
Anne (Amanda Root) is the luminosity at the center of this story. Quite different from her two insufferable sisters, the hypochondriac/whiner Mary (Sophie Thompson, sister to Emma) and the social climber Elizabeth (Phoebe Nicholls), Anne is the one who plays the piano while others dance. The one who nurses the sick child while others go to dinner. The one who gives up her dry seat to her sister, who "will not be damp."
Anne, in fact, would be too good to be true if it weren't for Root. Although Anne is often silent when she ought to speak, Root dispels any sense of stagnancy in that silence. Her eyes and steady bearing make it clear that she is thinking things over, deciding how she feels about things. Persuading herself, really, that her thoughts and feelings are her own.
And the forces that would have her believe otherwise are very strong indeed.
First, there are the sisters. One would think, to hear them and their awful father (Colin Redgrave) speak, that Anne is of a different family. And her surname is, apparently, "Nothing," so often do they attach that word to statements made about her, well within her hearing.
Lucky for her, father and Elizabeth leave her behind when they move to Bath to escape their debts. Although she must still suffer Mary, she also has a fortuitous opportunity to meet again the man - Wentworth - she loved but whose marriage offer she rejected eight years earlier on the bad advice of a friend.
Second, there are the Other Romantic Interests in the way. There's Louisa (Emma Roberts), who nearly kills herself throwing her youthful sweetness into Wentworth's arms. Then there is Anne's cousin, Mr. Elliot (Samuel West), who would have her believe that he would "flatter her and adore her to the end of her days."
It's the plain folks who are Anne's salvation, and she is one of them. Michell gussies down this period piece so that we see the stubble on the faces of the footmen, the blush that blooms in Anne's complexion as she begins to love again, and the sweaty tightness of Wentworth's collar after too much food and wine at dinner.
Michell leaves plenty of breathing room for the comic elements of the story. But it is a love story, finally, of remarkable insight. With so many poor imitations on the market, that makes ``Persuasion'' also a work of remarkable originality.
**** Rated PG for adult situations, a Sony Pictures Classics release, 1 hour and 44 minutes, showing at the Grandin Theatre.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB