Release Date:  September 1, 2004
Rating:  PG-13 (for some sensuality/partial nudity and a brief violent image)
Genre:  Drama
Run Time: 137 min.
Director:  Mira Nair
Actors:  Reese Witherspoon, James Purefoy, Rhys Ifans, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Gabriel Byrne, Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins, Romola Garai

“I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year,” says Rebecca Sharpe, the anti-heroine of William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1847 novel, “Vanity Fair.”  Oh, but if only money could make us moral!

The orphan of a French opera singer and an English painter, Rebecca “Becky” Sharpe (Reese Witherspoon) has no objective hope of succeeding in society.  But Becky is “not merely a social climber,” as one character puts it.  She’s “a mountaineer.”  So as Napoleon storms through Europe, Becky takes society by a storm. After working as governess for impoverished earl Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins), Becky earns the friendship and patronage of Crawley’s wealthy sister Matilde (Eileen Atkins). She then charms Crawley’s second son, Rowden (James Purefoy), a self-indulgent but likeable gambler, and marries him. To Becky’s surprise, however, Matilde disinherits them both.

Becky’s best friend Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), is enthralled with the handsome Captain George Osbourne (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), an army officer who cares little for Amelia, save her money.  George marries her to spite his father (Jim Broadbent), a wealthy, social-climbing merchant, then dies in the Battle of Waterloo, leaving Amelia pregnant and destitute, because her parents have also lost their fortune.

Now the mother of a young boy, Becky earns the patronage of the wealthy Marquess of Steyne (Gabriel Byrne), who provides for her uneasy entrée into the upper echelons of society, much to the dismay of Rowden, whose fears are validated when he stumbles upon them canoodling on the couch – or so it would seem.  Brokenhearted, Rowden goes off to war, where he dies.  Cast out by society, Becky moves to the continent, where fortune once again smiles.

William Thackeray knew something about the social interactions of the elite.  The son of an English merchant, he was born in India then sent to boarding school, in the English tradition, after his father’s death. He attended Cambridge University but didn’t finish his degree, having lost part of his £20,000 inheritance at the gambling tables. Thackeray also lost a second fortune, years later, in a banking recession.  He is said to have carried on an adulterous affair (after his wife suffered a irrecoverable mental breakdown) with the wife of a friend.  So, when Thackeray wrote about the ills of money, the bourgeoisie and high society, he knew of what he spoke.