Movies 2020/03: Little Women
Jan. 14th, 2020 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jacey
It's years since I read the book, so apart from a few memories about Jo being a writer and Laurie being the boy next door, I'd forgotten most of the storyline of Little Women, which is a pity because this version hops timelines which makes the linear story somewhat confusing. I ended up checking to see if Jo's hair was short or long to find out where we were in the story, which was a distraction.The performances are excellent. Saoirse Ronan is the stubborn and determined Jo; Emma Watson, her home-loving older sister, Meg. Florence Pugh is the somewhat selfish, Amy (No I would never have forgiven her if she'd burnt the one and only handwritten copy of my manuscript!) and Eliza Scanlen the doomed Beth. I didn't expect to like Timothee Chalamet as Laurie, but he won me over. Meryl Streep's solid performance as Aunt March is note-perfect.
One thing that always upset me in the book is that Jo ends up with and elderly, stuffy professor, but Louis Garrel sets this to rights, or maybe it's just that I'm now old enough to appreciate professors! Laura Dern makes an excellent Marmee March. I couldn't figure out where I'd last seen her face on the screen until I looked her up on IMDB - and of course it was Admiral Holdo in Star Wars VIII.
