Mansfield Park review

I may not have always paid close attention in my English Literature classes, but I'm pretty sure that my copy of Austen's witty romantic drama didn't include lovemaking or a brief flirtation between heroine Fanny Brice (Frances O'Connor) and conniving gold-digger Mary Crawford (Embeth Davidz).

Whispers of child abuse, rape, alcoholism - perhaps those pages were torn out of my version too. This Mansfield Park is anything but a faithful and slavish adaptation. Sexy and stylistically daring, certainly. But emotionally engaging? The jury's still out on that one.

Director Patricia Rozema pares down the plot to a compact and bijou 90 minutes, focusing on plucky yet naive Fanny who leaves her poverty-stricken home to live with her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram (Harold Pinter).

Over time, Fanny becomes an integral part of the Bertram household, catering to the every whim of the permanently sozzled lady of the house (Lindsay Duncan), and suppressing her burgeoning feelings for her cousin, Edmund (Jonny Lee Miller), who is poised to take up his religious calling.

Etiquette is thrown to the wind when rakish Henry Crawford (Alessandro Nivola) and his sister Mary breeze into the neighbourhood, and send hearts fluttering.

Australian actress O'Connor, sporting an impeccable clipped English accent, is splendid as the spirited Innocent in Wonderland. Unfortunately Miller, while easy on the eye, lacks charisma and comes across as something of a drip.

Davidtz has a ball as the seductress with one eye on her purse and the other on the competition, and Nivola (shoe-horned into a pair of breeches that must have played havoc with his blood circulation) swaggers as if it were going out of fashion.