Vanity Fair movie review & film summary (2004)

Reese Witherspoon reflects both of those qualities effortlessly in this new film by Mira Nair, and no wonder, for isn't there a little of Elle Woods, her character in "Legally Blonde," at work here? Becky to be sure never goes through a phase when anyone thinks her stupid, but she does use her sexuality to advantage, plays men at their own game and scores about as well as possible given the uneven 19th century playing field.

When William Makepeace Thackeray wrote his funny and quietly savage novel, there were few career prospects for an educated young woman who did not fancy prostitution. She could become a governess, a teacher, a servant, a religious or a wife. The only male profession open to her was writing, which she could practice without the permission or license of men; that accounts for such as Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, Mrs. Gaskell and others who, as Virginia Woolf imagined them, wrote their masterpieces in a corner of the parlor while after-dinner chatter surrounded them.

Becky Sharp could probably have written a great novel, and certainly inspired one; Thackeray sees her dilemma and her behavior without sentiment, in a novel that must have surprised its first readers with its realism. We meet Becky just as she's leaving finishing school, where the French she learned from her Parisian mother won her a berth as a boarder and tutor. She made one good friend there: Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), and now proposes to visit the Sedley family for a few days on her way to her first job, as a governess for the down-at-heels Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins).

But working as a governess is not Becky's life goal. She wants to marry well, and since she has neither fortune nor title it would be best if her husband brought both of those attributes into the marriage. Does this make her an evil woman? Not at all; romantic love is a modern and untrustworthy motive for marriage, and in England and India (where both Thackeray and Mira Nair were born), marriage strategies have always involved family connections and financial possibilities.

Amelia likes Becky (she is the only one at school who did, Thackeray observes) and thinks it would be nice if Becky married her brother Joseph (Tony Maudsley). Amelia's own fiance, Capt. George Osborne (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), discourages this plan, convincing the weak-willed Joseph that Becky is little better than a beggar with vague family irregularities, and would not adorn the Sedley household.

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