Thank Black Phillip that Anya Taylor-Joy accepted the devil’s bargain to live deliciously, otherwise we would have been spared the scrumptious spreads of Emma’s delectable buffet of baked goods and mouthwatering treats. From the nimble macaron to the towering croquembouche, just gazing at the saccharine foodstuffs of Autumn de Wilde’s Jane Austen adaptation is enough to give the viewer a diabetic flair-up.

A want for sugary confections is not the only cloyingly sweet thing on display in this humorous, frilly, and frivolous Austen update, which is dressed up with no shortage of absolutely ridiculous hats, dorky haircuts, and extravagant costumes. So too are the immaculately manicured landscapes eye-catching and dreamy. Emma Woodhouse’s family’s estate of Highbury is a vision of decadent interior design, complete with rows of marble busts, soaring oil paintings, and high-end upholstery that would make any furniture junkie swoon, and stands as a perfect visual metaphor for the gross disparity between the classes, particularly troubling in light of the apathetic indifference those with a claim to them often express. To this end, it appears as if most in 1815 would also have felt the Bern.

Entitlement is an overwhelming theme of Austen’s novel and de Wilde’s adaptation. To quote the titular literary character, “I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.” Emma, as portrayed by Taylor-Joy, is both entitled and selfish, playing matchmaking with the people around her because, well, there simply isn’t much else to do. In such, she’s not a particularly likable character though Taylor-Joy does what she can to avail us to Emma’s charms. While Emma revels in the domestic decadence of Victorian-era nobility, de Wilde’s portrait of high-class malaise reveals just how dreadfully boring being a proper Victorian-era lady must have been, what with all the sitting rooms and pinky lifting.
When her sister comes to visit Highbury for Christmas, Emma laments never having seen the sea. Considering that she is a rich noble lady living on the island that is England, the coast can never be more than a few days carriage ride. And yet, even the upper crust of society are not afforded the opportunity to venture far beyond their backyards. What a dull and structured life this must be, lacking in adventure, grandiosity, and surprise. This sentiment can also describe the lesser moments of Emma.

The unchanging scenery throughout the seasons explains Emma’s petulant interfering, the whole of the period drama’s plot revolving around the love octagon that Emma concocts. When she’s not too busy picking at sweets of course. It might take a good chunk of the feature for those unfamiliar with Austen’s novel to thread together the various webs of flirtations and wooings, especially when taken with all the romantic plotting and gross misunderstandings that come to bear.

There’s Harriet Smith (Mia Goth), Mr. George Knightley (Johnny Flynn), Mr. Elton (Josh O’Connor), Frank Churchill (Callum Turner), Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson) and though none of them engage in any premarital coitus, every last one of them eye-fucks the other like a free-for-all at the optometry office. It’s a straight-up fuck-eye orgy. I’m well aware that when Austen’s “Emma” first came out, the simmering sexuality got 19th-century readers hot under the collar, a Victorian “Fifty Shades of Grey” some might say, but in this day and age, it’s often much ado about nothing; a haughty parade of missed connections trouncing towards an incredibly inevitable conclusion.

Even those who’ve never read the Austen novel will likely be able to predict exactly how these “unsuspecting” romances will shake out by the end and the screenplay from Eleanor Catton does little to throw off the scent. We’ve seen this formula spun out a million times before, regardless of whether it was Jane Austen who invented it or not. Some of the performances can be excessively over-the-top, mannered to the point of breaking, but most have their charms as well when they actually let their hair down.

Though prissy, prim, proper, and pastel-shaded as an Easter Egg Emma remains a mostly effervescent and buoyant affair, very entertaining in fits and bursts though sometimes admittedly long in the tooth. Much like the characters in the movie seem bored by their circumstance and the repetitive nature of their boxed-in little lives, so too can Emma strain patience, with some scenes stretching on much beyond their expiration date. It’s one thing to communicate just how drab and dull Victorian life might have been in moments and another entirely to force viewers to suffer a similar fate.

CONCLUSION: As Jane Austen adaptations go, ‘Emma’ is an adequately coiffed and bouncy retelling, though tends to overstay its welcome at times, where the production design elements like the costumery, landscapes, and delicious cuisine really taking the cake.