Synopsis
Beautiful, funny, passionate, and calculating, Becky is the orphaned daughter of a starving English artist and a French chorus girl. She yearns for a more glamorous life than her birthright promises and resolves to conquer English society by any means possible. A mere ascension into the heights of society is simply not enough. So Becky finds a patron in the powerful Marquess of Steyne whose whims enable Becky to realise her dreams. But is the ultimate cost too high for her?
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Cast
- Reese WitherspoonBecky Sharp
- James PurefoyRawdon Crawley
- Jonathan Rhys MeyersGeorge Osborne
- Romola GaraiAmelia Sedley
- Gabriel ByrneThe Marquess of Steyne
- Rhys IfansWilliam Dobbin
- Jim BroadbentMr. Osborne
- Bob HoskinsSir Pitt Crawley
- Eileen AtkinsMiss Matilda Crawley
- Tony MaudsleyJoseph Sedley
Recommendations
- 75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Witherspoon is terrific. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
The spirit of that most modern of 19th century heroines, Becky Sharp, remains intact, and Nair's Indian touches make for an intriguing, fresh approach. - 70
Los Angeles Times
It almost makes you wonder whether Vanity Fair is not the perfect text for a lesson in Buddhist detachment. Certainly, Vanity Fair is a never-ending Western story that benefits from Nair's philosophically Eastern point of view. - 60
Variety
Nair's approach never entirely convinces, and the adaptation of the 900-plus-page book becomes increasingly episodic, making this Vanity Fair more a collection of intermittent pleasures than a satisfying emotional repast. - 60
Newsweek
Nair and Witherspoon pull back from the ferocity of Thackeray's portrait: they're afraid we won't find Becky Sharp likable enough. Yes, she's the most brilliant, bold and vibrant creature in this social panorama, but she should also be chilling. - 50
Time
There's something about her (Nair) Vanity Fair that doesn't quite work. There is no depth beneath its bright surfaces, no potent emotional undercurrents. - 50
The New York Times
Vanity Fair has a deeper conceptual confusion. In mixing satire and romance, the movie proves once again that the two are about as compatible as lemon juice and heavy cream. - 50
TV Guide Magazine
It comes as a huge disappointment, then, that having cast Witherspoon as Miss Sharp, director Mira Nair and Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) were unable to resist that impulse to find 21st-century prototypes in 19th-century literary characters, fictional creations whose values lie not in the way they reflect our own narcissistic times, but the way they reveal so much about their own.
