My mother, a former actress, adored Little Women and read the book aloud to my sisters and me
with different voices for each of the March sisters and, of course, American accents all round.
But she also insisted on one other thing, adhering firmly to the fine example set by the book’s author, Louisa M Alcott, of beginning at the beginning and ending at the end.
Greta Gerwig, the actress, writer and film-maker, does not do that.
She begins nearer to the end than the beginning, then skips back to somewhere much nearer to the beginning but still not quite there, and continues in that restless style for more than two hours.
Back and forward in time we go, retelling Alcott’s story of the female-dominated March family as they wrestle with approaching adulthood in Massachusetts in the years immediately after the American Civil War.
Gerwig’s non-linear narrative structure certainly has its problems – one minute Jo (Saoirse Ronan) – the literary one – is a published writer, the next she has barely picked up a pen.
And so it goes on – here’s handsome Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), apparently in love with Amy (Florence Pugh), the youngest March sister and the artistic one, and now here he is again apparently in love with Jo.
And please, don’t get me started on poor Beth (Eliza Scanlen), the musical one…
It’s a disconcerting approach that goes far beyond the familiar idea of starting near the end, then jumping backwards to tell the rest of the story in straightforward flashback.
It may confuse one or two and exasperate some others, but I absolutely loved the overall result. Somehow, Gerwig captures the spirit, essence and energy of Alcott’s book – all those hopes, all those dreams and, oh, the importance of family – and yet very gently places her own stamp on it.
And she does so thanks largely to an absolutely wonderful and totally winning central performance from Ronan as Jo, the character who has provided a role model for generations of aspiring female writers and who, particularly in this adaptation, is very much a cypher for Alcott herself.
Not quite as pretty as her elder, more traditional sister Meg (Emma Watson), the aspiring actress, and dressing for practicality rather than turning male heads, Ronan’s Jo is a headstrong, impetuous, nomination-grabbing delight, nobly convinced she can keep the desperate March family finances afloat with her writing as they wait for their father to return from the war.
There will be no place for love in her busy life, she insists… ah, but is she sure about that? After all, her New York admirer, the Professor (Louis Garrel) who, thanks to Gerwig’s peripatetic adaptation we meet early on rather than later, is awfully handsome.
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