Patricia Rozema

Patricia Rozema’s loose adaptation of Jean Hegland’s 1998 novel—the original evoking Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale with a touch of Orwell—is set in the forest of Northern California (in the unspecified near-future), where the siblings (in their late teens and early 20s, respectively) are living with their widowed father (Callum Keith Rennie) in a well-appointed country cabin.

But in spite of its unevenness, this version is head and shoulders above Patricia Rozema's revisionist Mansfield Park and last year's dour and dispiriting Vanity Fair, also set in the Regency period.