"Everyone behave naturally!" chirrups Mrs Bennet at a crucial moment in this new Jane Austen adaptation, a gentleman caller's knock on the door having sent her into the statutory tizzy on her marriageable daughters' behalf. Natural behaviour is not, however, what we have paid to see. Screenwriter Deborah Moggach's adroit version of Pride and Prejudice cheerfully satisfies the traditional demand for the conventions of bowing and bonnets and breeches and balls - these last held in rooms the size of the House of Commons debating chamber. It is a world in which swoon-inducing countryside is seen bathed in a golden sunset or the hazy dew of morning, in which there is hardly a footfall out of doors that does not dislodge a hen or a goose, and in which no door opens without a toppling entry of eavesdropping sisters.
This is a movie from Working Title and the word has been that Jane Austen, that ancestress of romcom, would here find herself being influenced retrospectively by Working Title's great authors Richard Curtis and Helen Fielding. I could only see one touch of this: a silent moment at the end of a ball in which kindly Mr Bennet comforts one of his plainer daughters for not having had a romantic success. Pure Curtis!
Jane Austen is a writer about whom pundits of all ages and sexes tend to get precious and proprietorial in a way they don't about, say, Charlotte Brontë or George Eliot. I can only say I thoroughly enjoyed this lucid version of Austen's novel, in which two headstrong characters, Lizzy Bennet (Keira Knightley) and Mr Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen), provoke, expose and finally purge each other's two famous sins - by falling in love. This new adaptation may not find favour everywhere, and it is not obviously daring or revisionist in the Andrew Davies manner; there is nothing to remind you of the classic Punch cartoon about Jane Austen's shocked editor telling her to take out all the effing and blinding. Neither does it quite have the sinew of Emma Thompson's superlative version of Sense and Sensibility, with the punch of those tearful scenes with Thompson comforting the jilted Kate Winslet. It is a clever, elegant rendering none the less.
And this is because of an outstanding performance from Knightley as Lizzy Bennet, which lifts the whole movie. She gives a performance of beauty, delicacy, spirit and wit; in her growing lustre and confidence she is British cinema's answer to Kate Moss, but Moss is a star from the silent era. Knightley is from the talkies. Only a snob, a curmudgeon, or someone with necrophiliac loyalty to the 1995 BBC version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle could fail to enjoy her performance.
Knightley's Lizzy is a naughty sceptic, a droll outsider; a team leader from the awkward squad, much given to fits of giggles and pert backtalk, with sisterly kicks under the table given and received. It is a great moment when she overhears Darcy describe her as merely "tolerable" in looks, and then flings the word in his face before walking insouciantly away. Knightley has demanding, emotional scenes in searching closeup and handles them triumphantly. Her star quality will quite simply roll over you like a tank.
Granted, the casting of Knightley and MacFadyen as Mr Darcy is arguably a little more callow than Firth and Ehle, and Knightley is better looking than Lizzy should strictly be, the original's looks being what fashion magazine editors call merely "editorial". But what a coup for Knightley. As for MacFadyen's Darcy, he plays his conceit and hauteur well, though his surrender to love is still a little on the reticent side. Nobody says the famous line about the truth universally acknowledged, but MacFadyen acts out its importance by enforcing utter silence at a ball by his mere entrance, like a drag queen in a wild west saloon. It is a pity that MacFadyen's real glow of uninhibited emotion - his reunion with his sister - is seen only fleetingly.
Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn provide yeoman support as Lizzy's parent's but the movie's big incidental pleasure is Tom Hollander playing the ghastly cleric Mr Collins, a pop-eyed social climber with money to spend in the marriage market, and a droning Olivier-ish voice. Hollander gets big laughs and comes close to walking off with the whole film, upstaging every one else on screen, even the mighty Judi Dench as Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Director Joe Wright cheekily shoots his excruciating "proposal" scene with Lizzy so that it's not clear that Collins has gone down on one knee, and he appears to have shrunk to the size of a hobbit.
There are no great textual variations or interpretative liberties in this Pride & Prejudice, but both of its key ingredients are there in generous qualities, and it is very nicely acted with a terrific above-the-title turn from Knightley. It canters along like a thoroughbred racehorse, switching to a gallop or a rising trot where necessary. It's an invigorating ride.