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Back Shelf Beauties
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Vanity Fair Our Legally Blonde Sweet Home Alabama gal is chucking her All-American Girl image to tackle a big-time, high-minded period piece with fancy costumes and British accents. Oh no, I'm starting to have flashbacks of Julia Roberts in Mary Reilly (She skins an eel in the movie! It was icky! An eel!). Will Vanity Fair be as much of a disaster for Reese Witherspoon? You'll be surprised at how good it is. Set in early 1800's England, Witherspoon stars as Becky Sharp - an orphan girl who has had a tough life. After losing her mother and her father, Becky spent her young days as a servant at an all girls private school, but she wants more. In fact, she wants it all as we watch Becky's life of pursuing riches and social status from getting better jobs to chasing after a well-to-do man to dealing with adversity. Will Becky find everything she is looking for? Will her ambition eat her up? Am I less of a man for falling in love with this movie? Based on a book I have not read, Vanity Fair is a directorial tour de force for Mira Nair, and an editing triumph for Allyson Johnson. The two combine forces to keep Vanity Fair's character-heavy story and multiple plots clear to the audience and invigorating for 75% of the movie. Nair deftly takes the cast through an epic tale stretching from countryside to city to the Battle of Versailles and more, while keeping us equally involved in each character's story and helping us keep all of the details straight in our own minds. We follow the changes in Becky's life, but her story is supplemented by the stories of those in her life like her best friend, Amelia (Romola "I forgive you for Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights" Garai) who has to deal with challenges and losses she never imagined. Also, we watch the heartache of Dobbin (Rhys Ifans), who yearns for a woman who might never love him; a strained father-son relationship between Mr. Osborne (Jim Broadbent) and George (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers); and Rawdon's (James Purefoy) growing maturity, or lack of it. While drawing our hearts and minds into the story, Nair also grabs us visually as our eyes take in the amazingly vibrant colors, the majesty of the ceremonies and the excellent amount of detail put into every scene including the furniture, the paintings on the walls or the amount of light in the room. Nair makes the film magical and real instead of coming off like a staged recreation of the time period. Sadly, Vanity Fair starts to drag a bit in the last 45 minutes. Maybe I was fatigued from the highs and excitement of the film's first 2 acts, but the last part of Vanity Fair didn't seem to have the same energy and impact on me as the early portions did. Witherspoon has a tough character to play as some might view her as a lovable heroine overcoming horrible adversity and a male dominated society, but Becky can also be seen as a vain social climber mercilessly willing to crush anything and anybody that stands in her way. That's the best part of the story. Some will argue society is unfair to her, others will argue she has herself to blame for her troubles, but Witherspoon does a wonderful job fueling both arguments. She adeptly swings between heroine and conniving manipulator, which makes you think throughout the movie. Best of all, Witherspoon is not weighed down by the accent. Instead of over annunciating everything to prove she adopted an accent for some attempt at an Oscar nomination, it becomes an effortless part of her performance. It was so good, I was inspired to go around for several hours after the film affecting a British accent all of my own (and I want to apologize to all of my friends who wanted to kill me during this period of time). She brings the needed vitality to Becky that makes the movie interesting as Witherspoon shows the character at her best and worst, but always ready to fight. Also, Ifans was fantastic as Dobbin. Without grandiose displays of emotion, he shows us Dobbin's love for another character (I'm not telling, you have to watch it!) with pained, longing stares, as well as a slightly veiled contempt for her lover that shows itself from time to time, and makes the audience agree with him. However, Dobbin is more than a heartsick secret admirer. Ifans also gets to show us a stronger side as well. Vanity Fair is a timeless story about life lived, and a skewering of upper class society. I will have to watch The Godfather and The Godfather Part II this weekend to erase the shame I feel for loving this female friendly movie, but it was worth it. 3 ½ Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2004 - WaffleMovies.com
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