Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Persuasion’ on Netflix, in Which Dakota Johnson Can’t Save a Fumbling Attempt to Contemporize Jane Austen

Oh boy, the Jane Austen Hive is in a huff over Persuasion, which takes one of the beloved author’s novels and runs it through the direct-address/wink-at-the-camera filter of things that are much more modern than those novels. Dakota Johnson does the breaking of the fourth wall, playing the protagonist of a story about courtship and manners and femininity, you know, all the usual Austen delights. But can Ms. Johnson, fresh off the hot debate of Cha Cha Real Smooth (liked her in that!), sell us on this unlikely blend of classic and contemporary styles?

PERSUASION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Anne Elliot (Dakota Johnson) was this close to happiness. Love. Marriage. A good man. What more does an early-19th-century upper-class woman need? But she let her years of upbringing in a shitty, shitty family corrupt her. He was just a sailor, with no “rank or fortune.” He wasn’t up to nose-in-the-air, tightass Elliot standards, so she turned down his proposal, and off he sailed. That was eight years ago. Now, Anne’s best friend is at the bottom of bottles of wine, and she drinks right out of them. Or maybe we – and I use the royal we, hence the singular – are Anne’s best friend, because she turns and talks to us all the time, sharing the contents of her heart and mind with wit and candor, sometimes while snuggling her pet bunny.

Through this narrative conceit, she tells us how her father (Richard E. Grant) is a foppish twit, her mother is no longer with us and her sisters, Elizabeth (Yolanda Kettle) and Mary (Mia McKenna-Bruce), are as shallow as a flea’s footbath. She sort of confides in Lady Russell (Nikki Amuka-Bird), a longtime family friend who checks in on the Elliot girls. Otherwise, Anne is facedown on the pillow, or showing us her secret box of treasures, where she keeps articles about her lost sailor, who is now rich and famous, and of the type who once used his naval faculties to rescue a beached whale. She doesn’t seem to have any further romantic prospects, although we can be reasonably certain she wouldn’t be interested. She pines and yearns, albeit very quietly because she’s British, although maybe not so quietly, because she talks out loud through the camera and our TVs to we, her confidant. Maybe “we” should be capitalized? As in We? For We are complicit in this.

Disruption occurs in the Elliot household – father is broke and they have to move out of their giganto-estate. Anne moves in with Mary and her family and, what with the inbr- er, tight-knit convolutions of English Society, finds herself once again in the company of her former lover who, by golly, remains unclaimed. This – this is her chance to knit her broken heart! But alas, there’s 80 minutes of movie left, and so many things stand in her way, although I can’t think of a single one at the moment. English propriety, perhaps, although Anne doesn’t seem to give a single shit about such a thing, since she drinks a little too much and says silly awkward things in mixed company and then looks a little rough around the edges at breakfast the next morning. She’s quite the puzzle box, that Anne. Go ahead, try to figure her out! Oh, by the way, her man is Captain Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis). Seems like a pretty nice guy. Be a shame if someone else married him.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: You’ve got the narrative style of Clueless or the Bridget Joneses, with the turn-to-the-camera-isms of Fleabag, and the anachronisms of A Knight’s Tale, although the Hailee Steinfeld Dickinson series is a tighter comparison.

Performance Worth Watching: So many talented actors and opportunities to steal scenes, so little worthy material. After The Lost Daughter I’ll watch Dakota Johnson in anything, but again with the lousy material. So that leaves Jarvis and Amuka-Bird as the standouts, since they hit all the right notes while playing the film’s most earnest characters.

Memorable Dialogue: I don’t think these words are lifted verbatim from the novel: “Now we’re worse than exes. We’re friends.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Persuasion has nothing on Dickinson, with its Gen-Z speak and hip-hop dance parties, which work because they’re over-the-top silly; the series goes all-in on the anachronisms, thoroughly massaging its disparate elements into a functional and flowing whole. It’s such a wonderful, funny series. And here’s Persuasion, which timidly half-asses its conceit through the Dakota Johnson mouthpiece. Johnson has grown into the type of actor who can elevate a middling project to watchable-plus status (think Our Friend or The High Note), but rendering this thing serviceable is asking her to turn a mess into a masterpiece.

Which isn’t to say Johnson’s miscast, or that Austen and this voguish narrative style are incompatible. The script just lacks pep and commitment, screenwriters Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow peppering neo-bons mots among all the usual period costume-drama trappings and rom-com cliches. Its witticisms seem lifted from better movies and watered down; it gives Johnson less barbed asides, more lengthy ramblings requiring her to hold eye contact with the royal We long after everyone begins to feel awkward. If Anne is supposed to be the deadpan wrecking ball to all the stuffy conventions of British propriety, she never gets enough momentum to do any damage. One senses that the film is trying to let some of the stale air out of the genre balloon, but it’s poking away at it with a blunt finger.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Aside from a couple light chuckles and Johnson’s game attempt to sell the concept, Persuasion is a floundering dud.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream Persuasion (2022) on Netflix