Root starts off wan and downbeaten but comes into her own. Ciarán Hinds looks like a rugged, handsome, weatherbeaten man who's spent most of his adult life at war. And The Chicago Tribune commented, 'the dress and makeup far plainer and probably more truthful than we're accustomed to in Masterpiece Theatre productions.'Īs for some viewers, they complained that the leads were ugly. In The New Yorker, Anthony Lane called it 'troubled, astringent, and touched with melancholy' - not unlike the novel. critics had mixed feelings about the film. But the director's goal was for it to feel genuine, like it could be happening in the next room, instead of getting caught up in the period details. The screenplay was by Nick Dear with Roger Michell directing and starred newcomer Amanda Root as Anne Elliot. However, thjey discovered the book presented problems, as the central character hardly speaks for most of the first half, making it hard to move the action along. Thankfully, BBC's collaboration with Masterpiece and Sony Pictures Classic (which put it out in limited release) led to extra funding, allowing filming on location and borrowed footage of tall ships from 1984's The Bounty. There was such a demand for Austen-era costumes, designer Alexandra Byrne ( Emma) had to turn to suppliers in Italy and Australia.

Persuasion, however, was a low-budget BBC endeavor adapting Austen's 1817 novel in under two hours. It was a big year for Austen, with Andrew Davies' Pride and Prejudice and Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility. If Persuasion has been described (not altogether accurately) as a 'Cinderella' story, the 1995 film adaptation is the Cinderella of Jane Austen adaptations. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.

Bbc persuasion