“They will bully you, patronise you and snob you. But that’s what you want I suppose…” I confess to not having read William M. Thackery’s epic novel from which this film is adapted. With that in mind, Mira Nair’s (Monsoon Wedding) work reveals itself as a sumptuous account of one woman’s fight for reason. A hard call for 19^th century England where reasonable women were regarded as an oxymoron. Vanity Fair starts promisingly with a precocious youngster disturbed by the sale of her mother’s portrait. A bright girl, Rebecca (Reece Witherspoon) becomes a governess who takes not unreasonable advantage of her situation. Those in polite circles see her as money grubbing society climber / mountaineer. Vanity Fair’s central theme about outsiders trying to fit in is informed by the direction of an Indian woman and the pivotal lead performance of an American. They infuse the film with a foreignness that gives it a whiff of the exotic, a similar ‘wrongness’ that so offended Thackery’s characters. Julian Fellowe’s (Gosford Park) crisp screenplay hits the right note although the episodic third-quarter spirals as he pulls in too many story-lines while grasping for a conclusion. A judicious trim of the source material would have been welcome. In keeping with the central premise, Nair’s approach is much more forward and energetic than you might expect from period drama. Vanity Fair is sharp, witty, robust and provocative but amid the opulent visual direction, she doesn’t loose sight of Rebecca’s timeless fight. As she says, “revenge may be wicked, but it’s perfectly normal”. // COLIN FRASER