run, don’t walk, to “Miss Potter”

Tru­ly, this movie has some­thing for every­one! First off, I apol­o­gise for any skep­ti­cism I might have felt for Renee Zell­weger (I know that’s a load off her mind). I think I was influ­enced by nev­er hav­ing seen her in a film, just in crazy Peo­ple mag­a­zine hav­ing got divorced from some­one she’d been mar­ried to for about six minutes.

But she was mag­i­cal! Quite a per­fect Eng­lish accent, very quirky and vul­ner­a­ble. And Emi­ly Wat­son was her usu­al incan­des­cent self (in fact would have made a very believ­able Beat­rix Pot­ter her­self), and the won­der­ful, change­able Anton Less­er had a small but excel­lent per­for­mance as one of the Warne broth­ers who pub­lished the orig­i­nal Peter Rabbits.

The most won­der­ful thing? The draw­ings come to life! Not in a creepy Dis­ney way, but just the draw­ings them­selves, hop­ping around and being charm­ing. And love­ly inspired shots of Lon­don in 1902, as well as the Lake Dis­trict where Beat­rix Pot­ter even­tu­al­ly saved 4000 acres of coun­try­side from devel­op­ers and gave it to the British peo­ple. I was so pleased: Avery imme­di­ate­ly got the con­nec­tion between what Beat­rix was doing, and what our won­der­ful neigh­bors in Con­necti­cut have done with the Land Trust that includes our lit­tle farmhouse.

And the top­per is that Fred­er­ick Warne pub­lish­ers had their offices in… Bed­ford Square! Oh, how John’s eyes lit up: his beloved Bed­ford Square (not that we can ever real­ly afford the build­ing he’s dying to buy there). “See,” I hissed to Avery, “some­thing for every­one. Real estate.”

Any­way, I can­not imag­ine any­one being stal­wart enough to get through this film with­out cry­ing. Except… my child. “How can you be so hard-heart­ed?” John asked. “Well,” she said, “there were tears in my heart, but I did not cry them.” This is, we con­clud­ed, because she does not have chil­dren of her own. Because real­ly the movie is about fathers and daugh­ters, in the loveli­est pos­si­ble way. Watch­ing the lit­tle girl who plays the young Beat­rix inspired Avery to ask about act­ing school yet again, so I’ve final­ly got organ­ised and sent in her appli­ca­tion to the Sylvia Young The­atre School in Maryle­bone. I can­not imag­ine that there is any trick to the dra­ma trade that Avery could­n’t teach her­self, but I could be wrong.

So go. Take your moth­er. Take your daugh­ter. Take them both! And take a tissue.