Emma.

Directed by Autumn de Wilde, Emma. follows Anya Taylor-Joy’s title character as she meddles in the romantic exploits of various figures – including Mia Goth’s Harriet Smith and Johnny Flynn’s George Knightley. First-time filmmaker de Wilde, working from an impenetrable screenplay by Eleanor Catton, delivers a sluggish, predominantly tedious drama that contains few, if any, elements worth embracing or getting excited about, as Emma., saddled with a punishingly overlong running time, boasts a one-dimensional and entirely uninteresting protagonist whose motivations remain almost stunningly inscrutable from start to finish – which, in turn, paves the way for a momentum-free narrative that’s compounded by an ongoing emphasis on subplots of a hopelessly underwhelming nature. (This is particularly true of the continuing exploits of Miranda Hart’s pointless Miss Bates, although, admittedly, the character is responsible for the picture’s sole moment of interest as Emma brazenly insults her in front of several others.) And although the movie does benefit from its visually-sumptuous sensibilities, particularly in terms of the eye-popping costume and set design, Emma. progresses into an increasingly interminable second half that’s capped off with a completely anticlimactic final stretch – which ultimately cements the film’s place as a pointedly worthless adaptation that might appeal to Jane Austen superfans but few others.

1/2* out of ****