Vanity Fair (2004)

[mysteriouza]

Director:
Mira Nair

Genre:
Drama | Romance

Tagline:
In a time of social climbers, Becky Sharp is a mountaineer.

Plot:
Growing up poor in London, Becky Sharp (Witherspoon) defies her poverty-stricken background and ascends the social ladder alongside her best friend, Amelia.

The British Empire flowers; exotic India colors English imaginations. Becky Sharp, the orphaned daughter of a painter and a singer, leaves a home for girls to be a governess, armed with pluck, a keen wit, good looks, fluent French, and an eye for social advancement. Society tries its best to keep her from climbing. An episodic narrative follows her for 20 years, through marriage, Napoleonic wars, a child, loyalty to a school friend, the vicissitudes of the family whose daughters she instructed, and attention from a bored marquess who collected her father's paintings. Honesty tempers her schemes. No aristocrat she, nor bourgeois, just spirited, intelligent, and irrepressible.

[zanesheean]

Vanity Fair could have been brilliant. The material is there, Reese bring to the table of the range that is expected of them and a performance that might have happened if it had been better used.