Persuasion (2007 Adrian Shergold)

A really interesting, successful interpretation - I loved it. We did a Christmas JA retrospective a couple of years ago, and somehow completely missed it. I guess it comes into the story from the novel later on, but still never having read a word of Austen, no idea... (This isn't acceptable, by the way, Jottings Nick). This is the Steadicam version. Works so well, because of the big focus on Sally Hawkins (who's always so real, so good), the intimate and beautiful shooting (David Odd again) and Martin Phipps' distinctive score, mainly on the piano. Didn't know Kristina Hetherington, the editor, but I could see several times she chose to stay on Sally rather than cut to other characters with dialogue - quite right. Of the ending, loved David Odds' tracking shot of Alice running through Bath, and that exceptionally hesitant and beautiful final kiss (one shot). And then, the circling camera at the very end, and how when they themselves begin to waltz within in it, it's just magic.

Rest of cast: Alice Krige (sympathetic godmother), Anthony Head and Julia Davis (unworthy, repellent  relatives.. you feel the absence of Alice's late mother), Rupert Penry-Jones, Joseph Mawle, Peter Wight, Marion Bailey, Tobias Menzies, Amanda Hale (a slightly annoying performance).

I'm sure I remember David Odd once telling me that he was hired because he could shoot films that made it look like it was expensive cinematography, which with hindsight may have been a rather modest way of saying he was (is) really good! Which he is. He first came to my eye on Dirty Filthy Love (2004, same director as this), with a sort of cinema verité look, and is still working, most recently on the great Giri/Haji.

And of course we have to acknowledge the writer - the other writer - Simon Burke. Ms Austen's stories often seem to be about misunderstandings, I was thinking, and dramatic irony (we know stuff the heroine doesn't know), although not having read... And Shergold's intelligent eye (there was more than one beautiful oner)... or, should 'sensibility' be the more appropriate choice of word?

This is the opening shot. If you're not in by now, you're an idiot