You’ll laugh, cry, cringe and covet the hats and bedspreads: Emma reviewed

‘Too pretty,’ blithers Miss Bates in the Highbury haberdasher as she plucks at a silken tassel. ‘Too pretty’ goes for all of Autumn de Wilde’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. If there were an Academy Award for patisserie and passementerie, Emma would win it. The look is Tinkerbell Regency. Emma’s Hartfield is a Barbie Dreamhouse by way of Robert Adam. Her earrings should have their own Instagram account. Any risk of sweetness is salted by exaggeration. This is Emma styled by Gillray, not Gainsborough. The first we see of Mr Knightley is the fly of his breeches, then his boots, then his fine, bare gentleman-farmer’s bottom. Emma lifts up her petticoats to warm the backs of her thighs by the fire. Mrs Elton’s wigs, meanwhile, are beyond the satirist’s graver.

Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma has a curious, captious face. She could be 13 or 30. Rarely have Emma and Harriet Smith (Mia Goth) looked more like schoolgirl geese playing at morning room swans.