The Jane Austen Hive is in a huff over Persuasion, which takes one of the author’s novels and runs it through the direct filter of things that are much modern than those novels. Anne Elliot (Dakota Johnson) was this close to happiness. Love. Marriage. A good man. What more does an early-19th-century upper-class woman need? But she let her years of upbringing in a stinking family corrupt her. He was a sailor, with no rank or fortune. That was eight years ago. Anne’s best friend shares the contents of her heart and mind with wit and candor. She tells how her father (Richard Grant) is foppish, her mother is no longer with them and her sisters, Elizabeth (Yolanda Kettle) and Mary (Mia Bruce), are as shallow as a flea’s footbath. She confides in Lady Russell (Nikki Amuka-Bird), a longtime family friend who checks in on the Elliot girls. Otherwise, Anne is showing us her secret box of treasures, where she keeps articles about her lost sailor, who is now rich and famous. She doesn’t seem to have any further romantic prospects, although we can be certain she wouldn’t be interested. Disruption occurs in the Elliot household, father is broke and they have to move out of their estate. Anne moves in with Mary and her family and with the tight-knit convolutions of English Society, finds herself once again in the company of her former lover who, by golly, remains unclaimed.

– Compilation