This Georgian stately home, once owned by the Villiers family, is now a National Trust site and has featured in movies ranging from Mrs Brown and The Duchess to Billion Dollar Brain and The Dark Knight Rises.Īlso standing in for Bath was Ammerdown House in Kilmersdon, about 10 miles south of the city in Somerset. Although the city’s Assembly Rooms are often seen on screen, here they were played by Osterley Park in Isleworth, West London. Some scenes set in Bath were filmed elsewhere.

Known as a Lover’s Lane in Austen’s time, its shaded trees and recreated Georgian Garden make it a popular spot for visitors as well as a shrine for Austen fanatics. Here, a branch of Primark was converted into Madame Lefroy’s dress shop, as visited by Anne and Lady Russell (Amuka-Bird), and carriages and costumed extras recreated a busy market-town scene.Ī key scene in the film, as in the novel, takes place on the Gravel Walk, the passage behind the Royal Crescent and the Circus. Alongside her is the always watchable Henry Golding, star of Crazy Rich Asians, and relative newcomer Cosmo Jarvis, seen in Lady Macbeth and Peaky Blinders, as well as Nikki Amuka-Bird and Richard E Grant.įilming also took place on Bath Street, with its distinctive colonnades. Leading as Anne Elliot is Dakota Johnson, fresh from irresistible turns in the glorious A Bigger Splash and The Lost Daughter, both of which featured her talent for the enigmatic in full effect.

Whatever the challenges of the script from old hand Ron Bass (writer of My Best Friend’s Wedding and Rain Man) and newcomer Alice Victoria Winslow, the cast should keep all-comers happy. Months before release, it had already kicked up a controversy by showcasing its modern sensibilities with Fleabag-style fourth-wall-breaking looks to the camera-as if 2020’s Emma or the US high-school reworking of Clueless had never similarly shaken things up. Hitting that sweet spot somewhere between social satire and period-costume soap opera, Jane Austen is the gift that keeps on giving for filmmakers, and this new movie adaptation of Persuasion has proved that truth to be universally acknowledged.

Persuasion dakota johnson