Crunchy Gravel

My eldest daughter Mattie, is a sucker for a costume drama  - in fact she's just a sucker for a costume.  Jane Austen adaptations are her favourite. She calls them “crunchy gravel” films as they inevitably have a close up of coach wheels on gravel! For her year twelve media project she would like to make one of her very own crunchy gravel dramas (even though her teacher is discouraging the ambition of this).

However, Mattie has asked me to make this regency frock for her school production in the hope it will be used again in her own film. We'll see. She'll probably just wear it while she watches various Austen adaptations.

Meanwhile, for more Austen appreciation, over at meet me at mikes,they have a book club reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

I once went to a Pride and Prejudice dress up party at the Fitzroy Bowling Club. I can heartily recommend playing lawn bowls in frocks and bonnets.

While I love all Jane Austen novels (except perhaps Northanger Abbey) there's a special place in my heart for Persuasion. I get goose bumps just thinking about the wonderfully fulfilling story which builds such tension. Aahh! The letter! I love that the characters are older and wiser and that the oft overlooked and neglected Anne gets a second chance at love. The story isn’t as dispersed over as many characters as some of the other novels and this results in a more intense narrative.

The 1995 adaptation of Persuasion directed for television originally by Roger Michel but then had a cinema release, is a delight.

It stars the swaggeringly handsome Ciaran Hinds as Captain Wentworth, and Amanda Root as Anne Elliot. It has the amazing Fiona Shaw as well. There is a wonderful freshness to this production. The production values have a rawness and reality that is often airbrushed out in other productions. Red noses in the cold, dresses muddied on country walks makes the whole world of the film so accessible. It’s like English-kitchen-sink-drama-meets-Merchant-and-Ivory!

Well I'd better get to it. Off to the sewing machine with me.

posted by sister outlaw Julianne