Persuasion is released on 8 July in cinemas, and on 15 July on Netflix. But there is something smug and misconceived and unpersuasive about it. And this film’s Bridgerton-style diverse casting arguably engages with the novel’s historical themes of imperial entitlement, properties in the West Indies, naval plunder and privateering. Despite Dakota Johnsons best efforts, the chaotically anachronistic Persuasion fails to convince as a worthwhile Austen adaptation. Persuasion 2022 PG 1h 48m IMDb RATING 5.8 /10 32K YOUR RATING Rate POPULARITY 1,919 68 Play trailer 2:22 2 Videos 99+ Photos Drama Romance Eight years after Anne Elliot was persuaded not to marry a dashing man of humble origins, they meet again.

Jane Austen books shouldn’t be holy writ for adaptations: the Clueless movie and Curtis Sittenfeld’s underrated comic novel Eligible show how you can take a free hand. Her cousin William Elliot (Henry Golding), a smug claimant to her father’s baronetcy, makes advances to her, and she is still close to the mentor who disastrously persuaded her against Captain Wentworth: this is Lady Russell (Nikki Amuka-Bird), who in this version is someone who makes cougar sex-tourist tours of Europe (off camera). Her selfish sister Mary (scene-stealingly played by Mia McKenna-Bruce) makes claims on Anne which take her away to Lyme, where the pretty sisters of her brother-in-law Charles (Ben Bailey-Smith) involve Wentworth in diversionary romantic attractions. Meanwhile, her family has fallen on hard times due to spendthrift snob father Sir Walter Elliot, amusingly impersonated by Richard E Grant. Now Wentworth has returned to the neighbourhood, newly wealthy, prestigiously promoted and reportedly still in search of a wife, to lonely Anne’s mortification (she is still in love with him). I mean, she accidentally dumps a gravy boat over her head while trying to hide from Frederick. The casting in itself isn’t the problem: Dakota Johnson looks and sounds the part of Anne, who eight years before has been persuaded to turn down a marriage proposal from the handsome but penniless sailor Wentworth, in which role Cosmo Jarvis does an honest job, with a touch of Firth/Grant in his shy-yet-grumpy reticence. The problem is that whatever character Dakota Johnson is playing is not Jane Austen’s Anne Elliott.

Dakota johnson persuasion