Miss Potter (2006)***

Seen on 4/8/2009 - Star Movies
Cast: Rene Zelwiger (Miss Beatrix Potter), Ewan McGregor (Norman Warne)
Dir.: Chris

"Blending lush animation sequences with live-action drama, director Chris Noonan constructs this biopic about the personal life of beloved children's author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. Featuring the Academy Award-winning Renee Zellweger as the title character and co-starring Emily Watson and Ewan McGregor, the film traces Potter's private life as well as her contributions to literature such as the timeless 'Tale of Peter Rabbit.'"
My comment:1. We get to see the famed Lake District here where Miss Potter, after the premature death of her fiance buys a country home with a working farm and settles down. She even uses her hard earned money to buy up hundreds of acres of neighboring farms just in order to preserve it from being sold to land developers and later bequeaths the same to land preservation agency!
2. It's touch tale of a young spinster who breaks restrictions of upper class early twentieth century family by (i) venturing into writing for children and illustrating them herself (ii) by boldly persuading the publishers to publish a female writer and succeeding in the efforgts (iii) by deciding to marry a person she loved from the inferior social class of tradesman against the staunch opposition of her parents.
3. Renee Zellweger is superb in playing the strong-willed female writer.
4. The director Noonan often imaginatively uses two bit animations to show how Miss Potter saw her fascinating stories and to bring them alive in her imagination. Thus her characters also gain vibrant existence as her life long companions.
5. Miss potter finds a confidante and soul-mate in the suffragette sister of the man who lovingly publishes her books and later was to marry her had it not been for early unexpected death. The triangular bonding is sensitively developed in the film.