Vanity Fair

Drama, Romance

Reese Witherspoon	Becky Sharp
Gabriel Byrne	The Marquess of Steyne
Lillete Dubey	Ms. Green
Deborah Findlay	Mrs. Sedley
Romola Garai	Amelia Sedley
Roger Lloyd-Pack	Francis Sharp
Ruth Sheen	Miss Pinkerton
Tony Maudsley	Joseph Sedley
Angelica Mandy	Young Becky
Kate Fleetwood	Miss Pinkerton's Crone
Bob Hoskins
Eileen Atkins
Jim Broadbent
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
Rhys Ifans
James Purefoy

Director	Mira Nair; Marc Munden
Producer	Janette Day; Lydia Dean Pilcher; S.M. Ferozeuddin Alameer; Ray Angelic
Writer	William Makepeace Thackeray; Julian Fellowes; Matthew Faulk; Mark Skeet

The corsets and high waists of the 19th century meet the lush colors and visual splendor of India in Vanity Fair, a classic novel translated into modern celluloid by Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding). The very contemporary Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde, Election) at first seems to hit the wrong note as Becky Sharp, an orphaned girl who rises to the heights of society using her quick wits and feminine wiles. But as Vanity Fair unfolds, the movie's tone embraces both period decor and modern attitudes, searching for a bridge that will carry us more deeply into a different time. It isn't wholly successful--the movie's end wraps things up awkwardly--but some scenes achieve a surprising and vivid immediacy, in particular one in which Becky's gambler husband (elegant James Purefoy) catalogues his worth for her before going off to the Napoleonic battlefields; love and pragmatism fuse with heartbreaking results. --Bret Fetzer