Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, published in 1847, has been adapted for the screen in several languages umpteen times; the latest UK version (2011) looks and sounds good enough to explain why such a melodramatic, Gothic and proto-feminist love story should have retained popular appeal for so long.

Partly financed by BBC Films, the production benefits from shrewd choices for its director and leading roles. Fresh from his multi-award-winning 2009 debut feature as a writer-director (docudrama Sin Nombre), the young US director, Cary Fukunaga (Japanese-Swedish parentage), approached the Eng-Lit period-piece with the outsider's eye (in a similar eye-opening fashion as Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility).

Italian Oscar winner (Atonement) and nominee (Pride and Prejudice) Dario Marianelli, in danger of being type-cast as the go-to Masterpiece Theatre composer, wrote the finely-muted background music. Prolific young Irish-British playwright Moira Buffini, who'd adapted Tamara Drewe for Stephen Frears the previous year, transformed Bronte's romance for the screen. She hadn't tied up Bronte's many loose ends, which is proper, but leaves various abrupt events far from fully explained, such as the mad wife's attack on her unidentified brother, Jane's cousins, and two French-speakers' fate.

Irish-German Brit actor Michael (Hunger, Fish Tank, X-Men) Fassbender was an obvious choice for imperious Rochester, Polish-Australian Mia (Alice in Wonderland, In Treatment, The Kids are All Right) Wasikowska a wise one for the young governess with heart, soul and many opinions. The key supporting cameos were played well enough by Jamie Bell, as Jane's pious suitor, and Judi Dench as Rochester's caring housekeeper.

Fassbender had several tough shoes to fill (Orson Welles, William Hurt and Timothy Dalton) and did so creditably, with moments of facial expressiveness a la Olivier and Day-Lewis at their best. Wasikowska is an ideal plain Jane of the 19th century, displaying the charming moral qualities and repressed teenage ambitions that were way ahead of her time and gender role. The cast's northern English accents might distress Lancastrians, but to an outsider they come across as acceptable middle-class regional characters.

This Jane gazes wistfully at her claustrophobic cloudy landscape with an intensity channeling a new Jodie Foster. The production embedded her convincingly in well-detailed production and costume designs, often illuminated strikingly by candles, with the surrounding starkness left deliberately silent and menacing. Fukunaga was lucky to be given this gem for his sophomore performance, and he rewarded his producers' trust.