September 2- 8, 2004

movies

Behind the Times

look sharp: Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon) never misses an opportunity to climb a social ladder.

Vanity Fair doesn't judge its protagonist so much as follow her around.

Vanity Fair

by Cindy Fuchs

Ah, to be young, bright and scheming in 19th-century Britain! According to Mira Nair's Vanity Fair, adapted from Thackeray's 900-page novel, Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon) has everything going for her, particularly the fact that she's the star of this lightweight, episodic social-climbing adventure. Her trials are minor compared with the goal she has in mind: ascension to the hoity-toity class, where, she imagines, she will at last be content.

That this happy ending is signified by Becky's grand entrance into India, wearing fine silks and riding an elephant, is not a little ironic, considering the colonialist backdrop of her journey. But Becky is rather oblivious to such matters, as her focus is relentless, if not precisely admirable. That said, the movie doesn't judge her, exactly. She's a product of her moment, driven by her desires and shaped by her culture. Becky rides along the surface of "history," cajoling her way to her desired end. While the film might have some ideas about her relationship to British incursions and racist or misogynist customs, Becky doesn't so much learn a lesson as figure out exactly how to wheedle.

Born into relative poverty, Becky soberly observes her struggling London artist father's efforts to make ends meet; the child goes so far as to step in during a sale, insisting that the buyer, the definitively snooty Marquess of Steyne (Gabriel Byrne), pay more because it's a portrait of her dear mother, a French chorus girl who died during childbirth. He's impressed with her nerve; she admires his fine coat. With that encounter, it appears, Becky's ambition is determined, and she pursues her class clambering with a vengeance.

This includes using her connections — namely her best friend at Miss Pinkerton's Academy at Chiswick, the fretful Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai) — to gain access to potentially advantageous situations. Just so, when her official education ends, and Becky cannot fall back on a family title or fortune (either being an acceptable means to a marriage that will impart the other), she first tries to win over Amelia's naive, eager-to-please brother Joseph (Tony Maudsley), in part by feigning an affection for his chief interest, India.

When her show of courage — eating a super-hot curry pepper while observed by the skeptical server Biju (Paul Bazely) — fails to earn her a wedding ring, Becky takes a position as a governess,for Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins), whose rural Hampshire estate is in dire need of her exacting attentions; within months, the household is cleaned up, his daughters learn to speak French, his son Rawdon (James Purefoy) falls in love with her, and his rich spinster aunt Matilda (Eileen Atkins) takes her back to London as witty companion.

Becky plays this role especially well, joking pointedly about Sir Pitt's less refined relatives and insinuating herself into Matilda's good graces. That is, until she falls in love as well, with Rawdon. Their subsequent marriage looks to the family as if Becky is conniving, and Matilda cuts Rawdon out of her will entirely. As he's a respected major in the British military, Becky again sets to wheedling her way into a certain social class where she isn't welcome, and again, she only partly succeeds. She reunites with Amelia, now married to her own bad idea, George Osborne (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an utter snob whose interest in his anxious wife is only ignited when his father (Jim Broadbent) loses his small fortune and the son is left with nothing but the title that came with Amelia.

Amid this elaborate social circling, Becky remains fixed on her own ambition, even when it obviously hurts others. In the case of Amelia's unhappiness, Becky doesn't reveal what she knows about the man who dotes on her, Major Dobbin (Rhys Ifans), or the fact that George is unfaithful (he's so crass as to proposition the newly married Becky, whom he had previously rejected as an upstart). In the case of her own marriage, Becky is prone to gutting her way through every difficult social battlefield (singing for ladies who don't like her, taking money from a rich neighbor who will expect a return on his investment), ignoring Rawdon's mostly muted objections. That said, by the time he starts skulking in doorways, nursing his drink and looking miserable, you're likely to be as irritated with him as she is.

Or rather, as she might have been, had the movie granted Becky any "sharpness." Though the details of her finagling are clear enough, Becky's emotional excursion remains obscure. Her piece de resistance — or one of them, anyway — is a performance, at Steyne's devious behest, for Steyne and the king, for which Becky wears garish makeup and Indian costume. With this affront to social norms, her reputation seems ruined (though other scandals follow), a point that seems frankly trivial compared with larger historical events, say, Napoleon's invasion of Europe, his escape from Elba and the Battle of Waterloo.

Of course, Vanity Fair's distance from history reflects the efforts of its "vain" protagonists to ignore exactly such troubling incidents. But it also leaves Becky's saga looking rather flat.

Vanity Fair Directed by Mira Nair A Focus Features release Now playing at Ritz Five