Reviews by Besoaria

Stupid choices were dropping Portshmouth, Sotherton and the Ball. The film is too short and fast-paced and overall seems to be done in a low budget... Billie Piper as Fanny is different than in the book, but not entirely unlikable. Her character seems modernized but sort of in a good way. Guess she is more approachable to a modern viewer, or that's probably what they aimed for. Not only drenched in her own pain and inferiority. The movie portraited the Crawfords somehow as really arrogant, even bitchy at times. Michelle Ryan could've got a better script for her Mary but fits to the role very nicely. Fanny would never even consider this Henry, and in this movie, it seems that she didn't. And the ultimate reason why this is probably my most rewatched movie is Blake Ritson as a PERFECT Edmund. He's just otherwordly gorgeous and good. I'm crushfainting way too much over his versatility compared to his other roles. He plays Edmund well-nuanced and looks divine while doing so.

Some costumes are not historically accurate [they look more 18th century than early 19th century and few of them are pretty lacklustre] and Fanny's hair is a mess - and so is Henry's! I loved the Newby Hall as a setting though, and this movie was more romantic, pretty, and despite all the changes, more accurate to the book than the 90's version.

Some actors are good, nice cinematography, romantic story - but full of historical errors, especially in the costumes, make up and hairstyles - mistakes even me, only a Finnish geisha and kimono enthusiastic like me, notices immediately, and probably every Japanese person. The geishas in this movie not wearing kimonos and traditional wareshinobu and katsura hairstyles accordingly to their position/how far they are in their career/age like they should. Pumpkin seems to be the only one who is actually dressed as an authentinc geisha, probably because the actress actually is pretty the only geisha who's actress is Japanese. Others are wearing randomly made-up hairstyles and too tightly pulled on kimonos [to accentuate curves, I guess, which should be totally wise versa] - very formal ones on daily basis, some are dancing and fluttering in their undergarments when they totally shouldn't - I even noticed a collar crossed the wrong way - the kimono's collar is only crossed right over left when the person is dead. That is BAD. The biggest fact that bothers me in this movie is that geishas NEVER did prostitution, NEVER. In the Japanese culture there were courtesans, but geishas never were one of them. There's no virginity-selling tradition among geishas that has ever been practiced. That's an error that was adaptated from the book, which apart from that, I quite liked. The movie just doubled it's historical mistakes. I'm also quite pushed by the hinese/Taiwanese actresses no matter how much I'd like them in other movies playing Japanese people, speaking with their own accents - in English. The movie wasn't even filmed in Japan. Call it a big time westernized product. But I think it's just unrespectful towards Japanese culture.