Emma-culate Reflection

SPOTLIGHT

jane Austen's is the essential Emma of all English Emmas. In ie first paragraph of the novel e is described as "handsome, clevand rich." It is not until many pages that dear readers are reassured e will live happily ever after with ^hHey. While Emma Thompson is hardly/ a traditional English heroine, she has an Austenian alertness, although there is a menacQfto her handsomeness, and—being a decidedly modern miss—she has to rely on success to make her rich-

She is today's answer to Maggie Smith (whom none shoula attribute with impunity to yesterday). Her performance as Beatrice to her husband Kenneth Branfagh's Benedick in the upcoming film of Shakespiare's Much Ado About Nothing is at once an homage to the venerable actress and a claim to her throne. It is a career move as impudent as Branagh's usurpation of Olivier's crown as Henry V. Emma's acting, like Maggie Smith's, comes from the Oxford-and-Cambridge school. Her current film, Peter's Friends, is a celebration of Oxbridge cliquishness—and a custard pie in its smug face.

Emma's intelligence is part of her beauty; her looks are clever, too. Her awkwardness is always elegant (think of the scene in Howards End when she accepts Anthony Hopkins' overtures); she has a way of playing second fiddle that wins her first prize. Luckily, there are enough heroines in our literature that she can remain for years to come as handsome and clever as any Mr. Knightley could wish.

FREDERIC RAPHAEL