The first snow has fallen. The end-of-year sentimentality is steadily welling up (this year more than ever). There’s only one thing to do now: Watch Little Women (2019). I specify the date because, as Little Women-philes know, there is a long tradition of Louisa May Alcott adaptations, catalogued by their dates and/or their Jos and Lauries. There’s 1994 (Wynona Ryder, Christian Bale); 1949 (June Allyson, Peter Lawford, with an honorable mention for Elizabeth Taylor as Amy); and a Katharine Hepburn as Jo incarnation in 1933. But it is director Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019), also known as the Saoirse Ronan–Timothée Chalamet version, that has become an instant, Christmas-adjacent classic.
There are Christmas movies and there are movies that are Christmas-adjacent—films that evoke the holidays without being so terribly on the nose about it. Gerwig’s Little Women contains overt Christmasness, of course: Boughs bedeck practically every mantel of the March home; the sisters give their Christmas breakfast to the less-fortunate Hummel family (only to be gifted a Marie Antoinette–style spread by their moneyed neighbor James Lawrence). The following Christmas, Amy (the resplendent, Oscar-nominated Florence Pugh) strings popcorn and Mr. March (Bob Odenkirk, whose casting is the only bad thing about this movie) returns from the Civil War.
But even when it’s not literally December 25—the day Little Women (2019) premiered last year to great fanfare—Christmassy magic infuses the entire film. The jubilant Alexandre Desplat score helps, along with crackling fires, fields of snow in Concord, Massachusetts, buoyant curly hair, houndstooth coats, frequent dance parties, and nonstop drama. Sure, The Family Stone is cool, but nothing beats your bitchy little sister lighting your novel in progress on fire, then later taking your place as your rich aunt’s companion to Paris, where she proceeds to get with the beautiful man whose proposal you just turned down. I’m willing to forgive the presence of Better Call Saul, because the casting of said rich aunt—Meryl Streep as Aunt March—never, ever gets old, and I’ve seen this movie three times now. (What is Christmastime without a salty aunt who tells you everything you don’t want to hear?)
Aunt March is the only woman in two hours and 15 minutes who can resist Chalamet as Laurie, who demands to be discussed, as a focal, if controversial, point of Little Women 2019’s charms. Some may say he’s too skinny, too boyish, and baby-faced for the role. I maintain that he, his feathery hair and Statue of David features, and, most of all, his fervency on that hill (you know the one), defeatedly declaring, “I love you, Jo,” is every bit as noble as generations of readers could have dreamed Laurie to be—a holiday gift that keeps giving. The internet’s boyfriend brings true thespian-cred to the role, and, as my brother enthused in the theater last year, “Nobody wears a blouse like Timothée Chalamet.”
The Link LonkDecember 18, 2020 at 11:38PM
https://www.vogue.com/article/little-women-movie-season
It’s ‘Little Women’ Season - Vogue
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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