Movie Review: Miss Potter

Miss Potter, the new film starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, tells the story of the fabulous famous children's book author, Beatrix Potter. Potter's books, first published about 100 years ago, have perhaps been so ubiquitous for generations, that we have never much thought about the woman behind them.

Potter is 32-years-old when she meets Norman Warne once her first book is accepted for publication. Living at home and long since past the age when her mother would even bother to introduce her to suitors, Potter is contentedly certain that she will remain single. She has, Miss Potter makes quite clear, all the friends she needs in her creations. For she doesn't just create her characters, but chats with them, travels with them, reassures them and regales them with the tales of her day. For any creative person who may similarly be often less of this world than the one in their heads, Potter's actions in this regard seem deeply familiar and it's extremely touching to see them portrayed on the screen (especially when what we usually get in stories about women deeply emeshed with their fictional words are far uglier turns, such as Peter Jackson's excellent Heavenly Creatures).

Warne and Potter slowly fall in love, an event which seems as unlikely to them both as the sudden and ferocious success of Potter's books. He proposes to her, and Potter's domineering (at least to the modern eye) parents are aghast -- after all, he is a tradesman. These period details are well-handled -- a hillarious and mostly silent old woman chaperone is one of the best reminders the film has to offer about the utter lack of freedom and privacy women have had historically. Eventually, a compromise is struck, and the parents agree that Warne and their daughter may marry, but only if they keep the engagement a secret for now, and only after a summar spent apart. Unfortunately, in that summer, tradgedy strikes and Potter, having no official link to Warne is denied even a chance for the proper rituals of grief.