'Vanity Fair' is a splendid star vehicle for Reese Witherspoon

Rebecca "Becky" Sharp has long been one of the literary, BBC-TV and film worlds' most delicious minxes and Reese Witherspoon brings her to vivid life in Mira Nair's colorful film of William Makepeace Thackeray's social comedy "Vanity Fair."

MOVIE REVIEW

VANITY FAIR

DIRECTOR: Mira Nair
CAST: Reese Witherspoon, James Purefoy, Romola Garai, Eileen Atkins, Bob Hoskins, Gabriel Byrne, Rhys Ifans, Jonathan Rhys Meyers
RUNNING TIME: 137 minutes
RATING: PG-13 for mild nudity, sexual situations, adult themes
WHERE: Bella Bottega 11, Cinema 17, Galleria 11, Grand Cinemas, Guild 45, Kirkland Parkplace 6, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, Parkway Plaza 12, Renton Village, Woodinville 12
GRADE: B

See photos from the movie.

Becky, born to a Parisian "opera girl" and a poverty-stricken artist, has an insatiable ambition that propels her through snooty British society up to, during and just past the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century.

In an entertaining moral romp that spans 21 years, her tenacity, voracity and resilience are unsurpassed and unrepentant: "Revenge may be wicked but it's perfectly natural," she chirps. She has always been an outsider to the drawing rooms due to class but she is optimistically determined to get there at any price -- though that price comes high.

Becky is smart as a whip and her wily ability to amuse and entertain with a razor-sharp wit serves her well as she hurdles over one family to the next to better her station. "I had thought her a mere social climber," sniffs one disapproving marm, "I see now she's a mountaineer!"

But she meets her match in Rawdon Crawley (James Purefoy), who declares their mating as that of "a governess and a gambler." Like that of Scarlett and Rhett in "Gone With the Wind," it's a passion that thrives on providence, luck and chance against a backdrop of war but suffers in times of peace.

Taking a smaller part in the film (if more equally in the novel) is the story of Becky's best youthful friend, the sweet, deluded Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), daughter of a rich merchant whose all-consuming flame for vain boor George Osbourne (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a soldier who privately lusts after Becky, overshadows the devotion of the kind, spindly Major Dobbins (Rhys Ifans).

What the film does very well is rip apart the perceived elegance of fine society. Thackeray knew that most of the upper crust who graced the best halls and soirees were rascals who inevitably struck it rich through guile or were born into wealth and, having little to do, were graceless, bored, fickle and amoral.

Witherspoon is terrific. Her Becky is complicated -- she vows only "two men will enter my bedchamber, my husband and the doctor" -- but she's supremely aware of her physical seductiveness and mental agility and not averse to playing either to get her way. Co-stars Purefoy and Garai shine almost as brightly.

While Nair struggles with continuity and labors under the epic scope of so many stories -- there are some jarring cuts and sudden segues -- she also does much right. Her penchant for "Bollywood" (for lack of a better word) sensuality also pays off. Times have changed since Rouben Mamoulian made his flushed Technicolor version of "Becky Sharp" in 1935 (other film versions date back to 1911) and our more open morality gives the film an added dimension as it looks at the darker sides of Becky's nature.

This Becky is a bawdier, lustier woman who, by giving us a character who aspires to be that which she already is by nature, peppers this humorously raw telling with a weightier conflict, conscience and irony.

Paula Nechak is a Seattle free-lance movie writer. She can be reached at nechak@hotmail.com.