Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair, an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s acclaimed novel, adds a dose of modern “you go girl” feminism” – as well as some Indian flavor – to the nineteenth-century British proceedings. Christoffer Boe’s Reconstruction, winner of the Camera d’Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, is a semi-pretentious rumination about love, fate, and memory that revels in its own artificiality. My deconstructions of both are now available online:
Vanity Fair (Slant magazine)
Reconstruction (filmcritic.com)