Vanity Fair

Reese Witherspoon makes a stylish Becky Sharpe but Vanity Fair the movie is a far cry from the book.

(Herald rating * *)

Legally brunette, Reese Witherspoon's closest fans may not recognise the newly dark-haired star of Legally Blonde as she essays a literary role for the first time in this adaptation of what's often called the best English novel of the 19th century.

The star's hair colour is not the only surprise. Those who recall Vanity Fair will be more than mildly irked to find that the director, Mira Nair, has taken a number of liberties with the best English novel of the 19th century, including Bollywood-style dance scenes and rewriting the ending of William Makepeace Thackeray's social satire.

Vanity Fair centers around Becky Sharpe (Witherspoon), the poor and orphaned daughter of a French dancer and struggling artist. Witty and intelligent, Sharpe is determined to lift her social standing.

At a time when women's career options were writer, governess, teacher, servant, nun or wife, Sharpe ticks Box B and becomes governess to the children of Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins). But as the prickly Aunt Matilda observes, "I had seen her as a mere social climber. I see now she's a mountaineer."

Against the advice of her best - only - friend Amelia (Romola Garai), Sharpe will secretly marry Sir Pitt's son, Rawdon (James Purefoy), but the path of true social acceptance is never smooth.

Sadly, neither is this movie. Thackeray's attack on the English class system will have little currency for much of Witherspoon's generation, who may think this is a movie about a stylish American magazine.

The dialogue is certainly too cerebral, the pace slow, rambling. The production by Nair (Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding), who shares Thackeray's Indian origins, is rich, the costumes stunning. Purefoy got it right when he said, "The book will survive long after this film has gone to DVD."

The disc will include an alternate ending as well as an alternate beginning, and several deleted scenes.

Features and commentaries concentrate on the film-maker's intentions rather than the usual production information, particularly the Welcome to Vanity Fair section, which tries to explain 1848 attitudes to money, and marriage, and England's colonial attachment to India.

* Dvd, video rental 11 May