Based on a Book

A Canadian director with the chops to helm smart, big-budget movies, Patricia Rozema had her first hit with the quirky I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987). Mermaids' heroine, a mouse among art gallery sharks, eventually comes into her own, surpassin... Read More

A Canadian director with the chops to helm smart, big-budget movies, Patricia Rozema had her first hit with the quirky I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987). Mermaids' heroine, a mouse among art gallery sharks, eventually comes into her own, surpassing the mentor who's risen on mousie's back. Similarly, in Mansfield Park, from Jane Austen's strongly autobiographical novel, penniless city mouse Fanny Price (Frances O'Connor) comes to live in a handsome country manor with the Bertrams, heartless, class-conscious relations. After many cruel setbacks, Fanny manages, by dint of writing talent and moral integrity, to win the day and the love of her life (Trainspotting's Jonny Lee Miller). Unlike filmmakers who dress up Austen's money-driven world in sweetness and light, Rozema rubs our noses in the fact that the Bertrams' wealth flows from the blood and sweat of faraway slaves--and she never euphemizes the down-and-dirty slum life that swallowed up Fanny's mother and threatens Fanny if she refuses to marry the handsome but hollow fortune hunter (Alessandro Nivola) chosen for her by Sir Thomas Bertram. (Playwright Harold Pinter is compelling as Mansfield Park's patriarch, capable of kindness but stone-cold when his aristocratic will is crossed.) Embeth Davidtz (playing Mary, amoral sibling of Fanny's suitor, with wonderfully seductive verve) and O'Connor resemble each other--and they are sisters of a sort, each vying, according to her lights, in a stock market where women must parlay sex and/or smarts to stay alive. Rozema delivers full-blooded Austen and a protofeminist with savvy charm in this entertaining ride in the socioeconomic fast lane, circa 1806. --Kathleen Murphy