Perfect Happiness: Clueless

Many viewers of Clueless, especially young people, have no idea that this film was inspired in part by Emma. The title sequence and credits don’t mention Jane Austen, and just one character’s name, Elton, comes from the novel. For those in the know, the Emma connections in Clueless offer a delightful in-joke, much as Jane Austen’s works contain insider references that only her family and friends could fully appreciate.

The American writer and director Amy Heckerling did not set out to adapt Emma. While developing a buoyant tale of a wealthy girl in Beverly Hills, California, she recognized a parallel with Jane Austen’s ‘handsome, clever, and rich’ heroine. Rereading Emma, Heckerling thought, ‘Oh my God, this is so good. This is so perfect.’. . . . I mean, it’s not a real adaptation. It’s not: “And then [Cher] meets a guy and he’s engaged and she doesn’t know it and there’s a farmer.” I was going for equivalence that made sense to me to tell the underlying story, in a way that made sense for what we’re living through now, or [were] in the nineties. So I wasn’t trying to say, “Here’s Emma.” I was trying to say that Emma makes perfect sense now.’

The manifold pleasures of Clueless include up-to-the-moment slang that Heckerling captured from real-life high-school students, Mona May’s unforgettable costumes, and radiant performances from Alicia Silverstone and Brittany Murphy, among many others. Heckerling broke ground by portraying a teenage gay character (played by Justin Walker) as self-assured and contented, as well as by depicting the interracial friendship between Cher and the equally stylish Dionne (Stacey Dash). An immediate success in the US, Clueless remains a cult classic.