Vanity Fair (PG-13) is an occasionally ravishing example of stiff-upper-lip cinema, in which British propriety fuels the plot and defying convention makes the hero. Actually, "hero" isn't accurate, since the subtitle for William Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 serial novel proclaimed the novel's lack of such a person. But it did introduce the manipulative character Becky Sharp, a less genteel descendant of Jane Austen's version of plucky womanhood.
Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde, Election) plays Becky, an orphaned governess flirting her way into high society. Some men, such as the corpulent brother of her best friend, Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), are left panting with desire. Others, like Amelia's priggish fiance, George Osborne (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), consider her a nuisance. A cadaverous family matriarch (Eileen Atkins) thinks she's a pip, and her soldier son (James Purefoy) learns the hard way about Becky's lack of loyalty. Meanwhile, a mysterious benefactor (Gabriel Byrne) and a shy nice guy (Rhys Ifans) lurk in the background.
The outline of Vanity Fair seems musty, but director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) infuses the production with Indian cultural touches that regularly enliven the proceedings. It's nothing revolutionary, since Thackeray's novel is steeped in England's colonization of that continent. But it's the kind of vibrancy that most filmmakers might ignore or muck up: musical numbers stopping the show, bursting with colors, exotic rhythms and not a whiff of condescension.
The actors are fine in ensemble proportions, led by Witherspoon, whose feisty glamor is better suited to Becky than, say, Gwyneth Paltrow's chilly veneer. It's a good performance spoiled a bit by Witherspoon's pregnancy during production, a condition that Nair doesn't do enough to disguise. You can bet that Becky would. B
