Miss Potter (2006)

This is a delightful and charming English love story in a gorgeous panoramic setting. Living amidst an Edwardian society of manners that was stultifying to gifted women, Beatrix Potter (Rene Zellweger) drew animals and the outdoors since she was a child and became a woman of independent means upon the publication of her series of animal tales that grew immensely popular as children's books. Her endearing and inimitable drawing style is crisply and colorfully reproduced, and in an inventive bit of whimsy, they sometimes become animated as they interact with her imagination. Zellweger's idiosyncratic and inspired facial expressions artfully convey the complex emotions of a "proper" woman who chafes for a measure of autonomy as an intelligent woman in her 30s. She meets the man who will become her publisher (Ewan McGregor) and in time the two forge a romance (all under the watchful eyes of her parents and crone of a chaperone). McGregor and Matyelok Gibbs, her chaperone, are a delight, and the film has plenty of moments that made the preview audience around me laugh heartily. Miss Potter is a wistful and innocent love story about the love of art and animals and books but esp. the love of a man and a woman who agree to a summer's separation imposed by her parents, only to be separated forever before they can wed. The scenes in Beatrix Potter's beloved English Lake District, which her estate became instrumental in preserving as a national park, are breathtaking. 4.5 stars.