Living the Romantic Comedy: 'Rona Rom-Coms #3: EMMA

[This Romantic Comedies in the Time of Social Distance series has been created in response to people looking for good rom-coms to watch at home during our current crisis. Some are directly apropos and some will take you away from it all, but none of them suck.]

In the category of romantic comedies that will truly take you out of the present moment and into another world altogether is the recent Jane Austen adaptation Emma, fresh from our now empty theaters, which Uni Focus in its infinite wisdom has made available on pay-per-view. It also falls into the category of what my screenwriter friend Tess Morris derisively refers to as "Bonnet rom-coms," meaning period piece pics that tend to be filled with frippery and frivolousness.

In its opening minutes, Emma certainly seems to fill that bill. Set designed within an inch of its life with a color palette that resembles glazed petit fours, it thrusts us into an early 1800s world of wealth and privilege that from the vantage point of our 2020 couch confinement feels more like science fiction than reality. But - and it's a "but" that's key to Emma's sly, delightful enterprise - you soon realize that director Autumn de Wilde and screenwriter Eleanor Catton are quite consciously, satirically sending up the Bonnet Rom-Com ethos, and that unexpected depths (along with LOL laughs) dwell beneath its artful surface.

This tale of a self-involved woman who gets her comeuppance en route to finding true love is piloted by great performances by Anya Taylor-Joy, Bill Nighy, Mia Goth, and Johnny Flynn, and it gets more involving and emotionally raw as it goes, ending up in a place that's as surprisingly moving as it is witty. So if you're looking for an entertainment that will transport you from the here and now, yet put you in touch with your humanity, hie thee to your home screen. For less than the price of two movie theater tickets, it delivers.