Anna Wintour Hosted a Special Screening of Emma, the Jane Austen Adaptation We So Desperately Needed

“I must admit, when I heard about Autumn’s film,” Anna Wintour said to a crowd dressed far too smartly to be seated in a dark theater, “I briefly wondered if we needed another Austen adaptation, if the culture hadn’t already achieved ‘Peak Austen.’ But my doubts vanished when I was lucky enough to see this romantic, beautiful, and witty film about a famously meddling heroine.”

Wintour was speaking of Jane Austen’s Emma and its titular character whose matchmaking schemes land her at the center of a love-triangle Venn diagram. The author believed Emma to be a character “whom no one but myself will much like,” but it seems she underestimated her audience’s appreciation for an antiheroine. And rendered through director Autumn de Wilde’s candy-coated lens, the 2020 adaptation of Emma leaves little not to enjoy.

The director herself (behatted and carrying a cane like a dandy) was in the crowd, as was the film’s lead Anya Taylor-Joy (who looked slick in a sheer dress that nodded to fashion history with its pannier-like silhouette) and the highly amusing (on-screen and off) Bill Nighy, who plays Emma’s father. Also seated in the screening room of the can’t-believe-it’s-Midtown hotel, The Whitby, were designers Fernando Garcia, Laura Kim, Jonathan Cohen, Tory Burch, Huma Abedin, Tavi Gevinson, Grace Coddington, and Sophie Sumner.

By about 7:30 p.m., everyone gathered to hear Wintour introduce the project. “How wonderful it is to be celebrating a woman director on the eve of the Oscars,” she added. The room responded in agreement with a round of applause, and the lights went dim. What followed were two hours of delight; the color palette looked borrowed from a box of macarons, and the costumes showcased Emma and her coterie gliding in and out of frame in satin slippers and gauzy Empire-waist Regency frocks. Hearts were broken, I do’s were exchanged, and, per the script’s devotion to the literature, the audience got to swoon over Mr. Knightley’s (Johnny Flynn) delivery of “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”

Like the novel, the film ends on a sweet note, and there was more still in store to continue the sugar high. As soon as the credits rolled, Vogue’s Hamish Bowles welcomed De Wilde, Taylor-Joy, and Nighy to the stage for a brief Q&A. Nighy delivered one-liners that had the room in stitches—when asked his relationship to the novel, Nighy proffered, “I’ve never read Jane Austen,” and when asked about taking on the role of Mr. Woodhouse, he admitted the period pants were a deal breaker: “My first words were no breeches...not that I don’t have the legs for them!”

For her part, Taylor-Joy gave insights on the film’s climactic nosebleed scene (an addition by De Wilde). In fact, it was an actual nosebleed. “I will never be able to do it again!” the actress insisted.

The movie marks De Wilde’s first feature-length project, which for her involved a rediscovery of Emma. “It was a bit like falling down a rabbit hole and falling in love with it,” she said. And the very same could be said of watching her new film.