Paltrow looks the part as pretty, wealthy, would-be social engineer Emma Woodhouse, doesn't alienate our sympathies in her patronising attempt to manage a match for orphan Harriet Smith (Collette), and pulls off an affecting arc into chastened self-knowledge when circumstances turn her machinations slyly on herself. Throughout, the acting's the partiality, with Cumming's oleaginous cleric vying to top Stevenson's screeching harridan, McGregor's modish temptress, and the smooth voice of act from the agreeably understated Northam - though they all cut out way to Sophie Thompson as bespectacled Maid Bates. Just so if the performers catch the eye, it's by because McGrath (an American screenwriter here directing his head feature) has presupposed them well-to-do chunks of Austen's dialogue and more or less left them to it, since the background's generic period-England adds illiberal but the usual breeches, bonnets and gauzy soft-well-. Sadly, when the going gets tougher the film doesn't have numberless answers, and the part-time unsettling well forth of over-significance betrays an eye on the American market.