It's late in the day for me to be posting, but I suppose I can make up my own blog rules as I go along. My breakfast movie turned into a lunch movie -- not the same movie, but a variation on a theme, as it turned out. Both movies I had seen before, and enjoyed enough for another viewing. First there was "Sense and Sensibility". Any period movie with Emma Thompson is worth seeing again. Or any movie, period? The internet site I just checked says she was the one who turned Jane Austen's novel into a screenplay. Must have had my eyes on my oatmeal during that part of the credits. 

Later came another English countryside drama, "Gosford Park". This one has Helen Mirren in it, another classy actress whose movies captivate. It's set about 100 years after "Sense" but remarkable are the similarities in how they portray the upper-class / lower-class dynamics. The often idle rich stew about keeping their money and position, because heaven forbid they should tumble and become one of the background people. At least the main family in "Sense" is amiable, not haughty -- maybe because they do get a taste of an economic tumble.

Both movies speak to the powerlessness of women in either century. Louder still is the book "Sense and Sensibility" itself, published in 1811. It was Austen's first published novel, which she wrote under the pseudonym "A Lady". Shocking it was for women to be writing books! And yet both movies, though focusing on women with limited choices, show ladies living as dynamically as they can within their prescribed worlds. Yeah, ok, they're both chick flicks.

Her ladyship Sandie of Bloggingdom currently seeks a nap. A dynamic nap.