I have to admit I do (is there something genetically wrong with me?), yet I can see what the reviewer in the Times meant when he wrote: "Grant's tongue-tied manner and physical bearing suggests someone stuffed. You either like this kind of oh-so-English thing, or you don't. She wrote the part specially for Grant, and it shows: he gets amusing lines, delivered in the stumbling, aren't-I-adorable way that was already becoming his trademark. Out of her head (not out of the novel, as many assumed) came the scenes in which he and Elinor Dashwood (played by Thompson herself) fall for each other in the house and grounds of Norland Park. Thompson pretty much invented a whole character for the diffident hero, Edward Ferrars (Grant). And a story that keeps its force as a study of class and money and character, but aims mostly for sheer pleasure – and to be funny. The final result of all that work is an appealing half-parody of a style, catering to a 20th-century audience but not assuming that its members have been lobotomised (Downton Abbey, anyone?). (It won an Oscar, remember.) Thompson plays fast and loose with Austen, cutting huge chunks out of the novel, adding whole scenes a mere six or seven lines from the book actually make it into the film. Well done, him: this is an exceptional screenplay, crisply and skilfully done. A repairman couldn't help, so she took the computer in a cab to Stephen Fry, who – boffin that he is – managed to rescue it.
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Apparently, at an advanced stage, her computer crashed and she couldn't retrieve the relevant file. Thompson spent five years wrestling with the screenplay, trying to stay tuned to Austen's dry wit but also making a modern entertainment out of an easy-to-dismiss, over-familiar, will-they-or-will-they romance.
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My favourite film, a costume drama? A period romance? Jane Austen? With lead roles played by head-girl Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant in classic floppy-haired, shy-but-charming mode? What happened to Tarkovsky and Kiarostami? But I can't help it: I know Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility is not challenging, I realise it has lots of bonnets, and that I should prefer Trainspotting, which came out in the same week early in 1996, but I'm extremely partial to this film.