Cloud High

There is of course one leading lady in Jane Eyre and Oh boy, does she do just that. Mia Wasikowska is a young Australian who began her acting career after an initial ballet fascination waned.

When she first appears, it seems as if this creature from the New World has been an inhabitant of the old for centuries. Her face is very like Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' or any number of classic female portraits from another era. After a while you realise the casting director and director Cary Fukunaga have chosen all their actors with this delicacy and precision.

The voice of Charlotte Brontë longing for broader horizons, for potency, money and love is very clear and all these thoughts flying through Jane's mind are writ large as they emerge in the seemingly effortless performance.

The camera work, music, costuming and makeup are also superb but in case you are tempted to wallow in the luxury of it, beware. Take care not to miss the dialogue...the scene where Jane jousts with her employer for the first time, her yearning for the wide world near a great mullioned window, her declaration of full sensibility in the face of Rochester's teasing arrogance.

It is every young girls dream and the gaggle of young women I saw it with could barely contain themselves so tightly is the sexuality wound but it also holds the dream of fulfilment and that is never out of date.