Emma

Romance/Comedy/Drama

Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Mia Goth, Callum Turner, Josh O'Connor, Connor Swindells, Bill Nighy, Miranda Hart.

Emma Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy) reassures her worrywart widower father (Bill Nighy) that she has no intention of contriving her own love match.

"I promise to make none for myself," she trills, promising to remain by his side on the family's vast country estate.

However, Emma cannot resist interfering in matters of the heart and she defies the warnings of neighbour Mr Knightley (Johnny Flynn) to mould the romantic prospects of naive new acquaintance Harriet Smith (Mia Goth).

The easily influenced young woman is smitten with farmer Robert Martin (Connor Swindells) but Emma persuades Harriet to shun his lowly advances in favour of buffoonish vicar Mr Elton (Josh O'Connor).

Meanwhile, Emma eagerly awaits the arrival of Frank Churchill (Callum Turner) and ruefully tolerates the constant twittering of spinster Miss Bates (Miranda Hart).

Emma is a spirited yet staunchly faithful treatment of Jane Austen's 1815 novel of mismatched lovers, which gallops over various hurdles on the characters' converging paths to enduring happiness.

Neatly bookmarked into chapters denoting the four seasons, director Autumn de Wilde's film fizzes pleasantly for two hours, condensing the book's central themes and disentangling extraneous characters and narrative diversions.

Taylor-Joy is a snug fit for the aloof, shallow and adroit heroine and catalyses gently simmering on-screen chemistry with Flynn.

The most imaginative and wickedly enjoyable screen adaptation of Austen's work remains Amy Heckerling's delicious 1995 teen comedy Clueless but de Wilde politely reminds us of the book's bountiful but old-fashioned charms without straying far from the page.

Rating: ***